PHP imagefttext (imagettftext) not displaying anything

I'm almost positive that there is a stupid reason this is not working, but I just can't figure this one out. I'm just trying to print out some text as a graphic with imagettftext, but I can't get the words to display. This is on a GoDaddy server, so I don't control everything, but here are the specs from phpinfo():

• PHP Version 5.2.14
• --with-gd' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr' '--with-png-dir=/usr/bin/libpng-config' '--enable-gd-native-ttf'
• GD Support enabled
• GD Version bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
• FreeType Support enabled
• FreeType Linkage with freetype
• FreeType Version 2.2.1

Here is the code I'm using. Nothing fancy or strange.

$width = 270;
$height = 25;
$image = imageCreate($width, $height);
$white = imageColorAllocate($image, 255, 255, 255);
$black = imageColorAllocate($image, 0, 0, 0);
$font = 'verdana.ttf';
imagefttext($image, 16, 0, 0, 0, $black, $font, 'TESTING TEXT');
header("Content-type:  image/gif");
imageGIF($image);

I've tried changing the font name different ways:

$font = './verdana.ttf';
$font = dirname(__FILE__).'/verdana.ttf';

I've tried using PNG instead of GIF, I've tried using imagefttext() and imagettftext(), I've tried displaying errors, but it doesn't show any errors, just a blank screen. Any ideas? It's gotta be something so stupid...