Is there any easier way to get pretty much the same result?
http://zyberscape.com/aaronsgetotest.php

PHP Code:

<?
// checks if the server is online or offline
$i = "255.255.255.255";
$p = "6000";
$c = @fsockopen($i, $p, $ERRNO, $ERRSTR, 1);

// create a 741*17 image
$online = imagecreate(741, 17);
$offline = imagecreate(741, 17);

// text variables
$bg = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
$textcolor = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 160, 0);

$bg2 = imagecolorallocate($im2, 0, 0, 0);
$textcolor2 = imagecolorallocate($im2, 255, 40, 0);

imagestring($online, 5, 0, 0, " On"  , $textcolor);
imagestring($offline, 5, 0, 0, " Off"  , $textcolor2);

// output the image
header("Content-type: image/png");
    if($c) {
        echo imagepng($online);
    }
    else {
        echo imagepng($offline);
    }
?>

There is always a way, but the code is nice and decent, why do you want it to be any smaller?

Becuase I am new with PHP Images and it looks really ugly to me.

But why would you want to use an image with text on to output text?

Surely you could style a div with CSS to contain the text message.

Not really because I want to use it on forums and ext. so I have to keep it without CSS/HTML so I place it as an [Img]