WP Plugin that requires ‘CURL’ or ‘URL file-access

I've got a WordPress blog http://peculiarplace.com/testlbog2/ that I'm trying to get a plugin to work.

The plugin: MaxBlogPress DealDotCom Widget version 1.4.2
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/mdw/

It requires ‘CURL’ or ‘URL file-access' in order to function.

according to http://wiki.dreamhost.com/CURL 'CURL' is available yet the plugin refuses to work.

When I click the activation link it takes over four minutes to report that it's activated (when this usually takes a second or so with all other plugins)

Then when the widget is added to the blog's sidebar, the blog page takes equally long to load and when it finally does there's an error message because it wasn't able to load the information it needs from another site.

Anyone have any experience with this plugin or clues how to get this working?

Thanks

Btw- I forgot to mention that I've been in contact with the plugin's developers and the best that they can say is that the only reason it doesn't work is because both ‘CURL’ and ‘URL file-access' are disabled.Edited by selif on 08/25/08 02:05 PM (server time).

cURL is definitely working (I use it all the time). I don't use WordPress though, so you will need to get WordPress advice from another DreamHoster.

-- si-blog --

First, you say it needs cURL *or* URL file-access, then the developer says it needs cURL *and* URL file-access. URL file-access isn't going to work here, as it's a security risk.

-Scott

In reply to:
First, you say it needs cURL *or* URL file-access, then the developer says it needs cURL *and* URL file-access. URL file-access isn't going to work here, as it's a security risk.

not quite. Developer says that one or the other must be available. also says that plugin doesn't work because they believe that neither is available.

From what I can see, their code is first trying URL file-access and then if that is not available, it tries cURL...

	function maxbpddcExtractData() {
		$maxbpddc_data = array();
		$ddc_url = 'http://www.dealdotcom.com/wp';
		if ( ini_get('allow_url_fopen') ) {
			$ddc_output  = file_get_contents($ddc_url); 
		} else if ( extension_loaded('curl') ) { 
			$ch = curl_init();
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $ddc_url);
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
			$ddc_output = curl_exec($ch); 
			curl_close($ch);
		} else {
			$this->maxbpddc_err = "Can't load MaxBlogPress DealDotCom Widget because 'URL file-access' and 'CURL' both are disabled in your server.";
		}

Edited by selif on 08/25/08 08:04 PM (server time).

Remove the superfluous if's and else's and have the function actually *use* cURL.

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/CURL

WP Plugin that requires ‘CURL’ or ‘URL file-access