:Undefined index: columns in ssp.class.php and Undefined index draw in ssp.class.php

Habitat

I am receiving these two errors after trying to implement a test server-side page on my local webserver. I have an unmodified ssp.class.php straight off of the github (except for commented out $file test block).

I have also modified my server_side.php simple() to POST instead of GET as well as modified my datatables ajax call to include "type": "POST"

I had previously modified the ssp.class.php to set the query to UTF8 as per google but this did not fix anything.

the first line of my JSON return is like so:

{"draw":0,"recordsTotal":1000,"recordsFiltered":1000,"data":[

So I know that draw is atleast being set somewhere. I'm kind of at a loss since I figured this simple version of the server side part of datatables would work out the box after the minor changes you are instructed to make.

Any ideas would be appreciated, just needed to be pointed in the right direction. I really don't want to switch to something else as I have used datatables for smaller tables in the past and I love it. My table for this current project is 6k rows+ so it requires server side otherwise it slows to a crawl, so I have never worked with this before and am in my infancy knowledge wise.

Thanks in advance