Prior to version 0.4, the plugin retrieved external data by using file_get_contents() function.  Some Web hosting companies, however, disable the use of this function on remote URLs for security reasons by setting PHP configuration directive allow_url_fopen to Off; consequently, include_HTML wouldn’t work on systems configired this way.

The alternative, of course, is to use the Client URL (cURL) extension, which would work regardless of allow_url_fopen setting, but may or may not be available on a specific system.

Starting from version 0.4, include_HTML begins by checking if the cURL extension is available on the host system.  If it is, the plugin relies on it to retrieve external data.  If it isn’t, the plugin falls back on the old file_get_contents() mechanism.

It is hoped that this modification would improve the plugin’s portability.  A big thank-you to VickiLH2 for suggesting and testing out the cURL data retrieval.