Update query

Hi I have been fighting for hours now and cant seem to work out what the issue is. I want to do a simple update query I have stripped it down to is bare minimum to try and get it to work but still no joy. If I was to run the update query directly in phpmyadmin then it works straight away but when i try to run it via php script it does not work. I get a message saying connection to my database is successful but that's about it. I have changed all the privilege settings to allow everything for the specific user but still nothing happens. the MySQL server is on a Godaddy server. The strange thing is I am able to insert new members into the database and also do select query fine. I have attached the code I am using below:

<?php

//Our connection details.
$servername = 'localhost';
$username = '*********';
$password = '**********';
$dbname = 'members';

// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if (!$conn) {
die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}
echo "Connected successfully";



$sql = "UPDATE members SET verified_account=1 WHERE member_id=1";


?>

Code (markup):

If anyone is able to help it would be amazing

 

Add this after your sql

if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
echo"Record updated successfully";
} else {
echo"Error updating record: " . $conn->error;
}

Code (markup):

It may throw the error.