fwrite working for some things but not others

[riceje7]

so i am trying to rewrite a header file on my wordpress site so that when users run this script it will update a scrolling banner with images they have supplied. to the header i am writing $headerbegindata $imagedata and $headerendata however i get nothing from $imagedata because nothing is writing to it. i have this working locally but when i put it on the server it doesn't work. any ideas what might be going on?

 

<?php 
$imagepathstart = '<li><img src="http://.../images/banner/'; 
$imagepathend = '" height="230"></li>';
$imagelist = 'images.txt';
if(fopen($imagelist, '')){
	$images = fopen($imagelist, 'w');

	$dir ='../banner'; 
	foreach (new DirectoryIterator($dir) as $fileInfo) {
		if($fileInfo->isDot()) continue;
		if(mime_content_type($fileInfo->getFilename()) == 'image/jpeg'){
			fwrite($images, $imagepathstart.$fileInfo->getFilename().$imagepathend."\n");
		}
	}
	fclose($images);
	}
else{
	echo "error";
}

$images = fopen($imagelist, 'r');
$imagedata = fread($images, filesize($imagelist));
fclose($images);

$headerbegindir = '../banner/headerbegin.php';
$headerbeginr = fopen($headerbegindir, 'r');
$headerbegindata = fread($headerbeginr, filesize($headerbegindir));
fclose($headerbeginr);

$headerenddir = '../banner/headerend.php';
$headerendr = fopen($headerenddir, 'r');
$headerenddata = fread($headerendr, filesize($headerenddir));
fclose($headerendr);

$newheader = '../../header.php';
$handler = fopen($newheader, 'w');
$headerdata = $headerbegindata.$imagedata.$headerenddata;
if(fwrite($handler, $headerdata)){
	echo "These Files Added To Scrolling Gallery:"."\n".$imagedata;
}
fclose($handler);
?>

[riceje7]

also i have the permissions set correctly to images.txt and i'm not getting any errors