I have recently changed hosts, on my old host if i had an error in my syntax the error would be displayed (showing me where the error was)
On my new host i do not see this, i just see
The website encountered an error while retrieving http://www.XXX.co.uk/delete_product.php?q=66550. It may be down for maintenance or configured incorrectly.
Is there any way i can show the error instead of this?
On production systems, do not use ini_set('display_errors', 1); as it can show information you might want to keep hidden. Use the server's logs instead. By default apache for example logs these errors in error_log.
And, anything that is open to the general internet public is considered "production" in my opinion. Development means it is a server sitting in your own local network.
Turn on error reporting.
Include these lines are the top of your script:
ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
If you have access to edit the php.ini file, you can edit it and include the following option:
error_reporting = E_ALL
These settings will help you troubleshoot code faster and makes it easy to identify errors. However, it is not appropriate for a production-level use. You should use the first method and then you can remove the lines once you've fixed the issues. On local development environments, it's okay to edit php.ini file and add the directive as mentioned above.
Turning on error reporting would work, but perhaps it would be better to look into the server logs.