"I can't use an IDE as this is running on shared hosting."

Of course you can use an IDE. There are several ways you can go about it depending on the IDE, but at least you can copy the code to your local machine mocking up parts of the system as needed. At best your IDE can connect to a remote system and let you debug the code running on that system. Using a good IDE for debugging is vastly more productive than any other technique.

While not as good as an IDE, the Perl debugger allows you to place breakpoints to pause execution while you inspect the state of variables. You can then trace through code one statement at a time to see where execution really goes. See perldebtut. If you do any significant amount of coding the time spent to use a debugger will be paid back in time saved many times over!