PHP has a INI setting called
allow_url_fopen, and when that is set to
Off you're not able to use http & ftp streams with
include or
fopen().
Don't worry because as of PHP 4.3.2 there are new functions to create your own stream wrappers like
stream_wrapper_register and
stream_wrapper_unregister
Thanks to the new features we can get around it on hosts that disallow url_fopen for
security reasons 
To achieve this we need to write our own stream wrapper that uses
fsockopen 
My http stream wrapper can be found here
http://cvs.moocms.com/moo/moo_core/l...eam/http.php?v
and here's how to use it
PHP Code:
if (!ini_get('allow_url_fopen'))
{
include('moo_core/libraries/stream/http.php');
stream_wrapper_unregister('http');
stream_wrapper_register('http', 'lib_stream_http');
}
Warning: by doing this you are re-opening the implemented security risks. therefore you should be very carefull with include() and require() functionality.
Therefore it's advisable NOT to use stream_wrapper_register if you're a PHP newbie and just use
PHP Code:
$fp = new lib_stream_http;