Then I searched and found this:
http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7208&p=39746&hilit=conn%3Asend#p39675
I originally was using "buf = buf.."some text" etc. and then client:send(buf); but it caused random errors. Someone on the forum here suggested using conn:send and that worked fine. But apparently it no longer works. Lines of code that worked fine if using conn:send method throw errors when using the send(buf) method.
Any suggestions???