Right now the text at the bottom doesn't even show up, it only shows up if I remove the only "or die" statement I have which is kinda confusing
Why is that confusing? That indicates that your script is die()ing after calling open().
What is "/home/myname/public_html/upload" ? Is that really a directory? You can't open() directories; opendir() does that but that's not what you need anyway. You need to provide a legitimate file name for open().
I don't know what kind of requirements you have there. You could either use whatever the user is supplying (after stripping off the path and troublesome characters; e.g., pipes, etc. Or you can give it your own name based on whatever requirements you have...

--perlplexer