Quote Originally Posted by DrByte View Post
The fact that your 2nd echo does not appear means the code before it is failing with fatal errors. Your server's PHP error-logs will contain more information. Clearly something's unusual about your server config which is preventing this from operating normally.
Thanks, Dr Byte - appreciate the advice on the way forward. I've started investigating how to access those PHP error logs. Will report back after speaking with my ISP (need their intervention to enable PHP error tracking, which is currently turned off) and when I know more. Fingers crossed.