PHP ini file_get_contents external url

The setting you are looking for is allow_url_fopen.

You have two ways of getting around it without changing php.ini, one of them is to use fsockopen(), and the other is to use cURL.

I recommend using cURL over file_get_contents() anyways, since it was built for this.

Complementing Aillyn's answer, you could use a function like the one below to mimic the behavior of file_get_contents:

function get_content($URL){
      $ch = curl_init();
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $URL);
      $data = curl_exec($ch);
      curl_close($ch);
      return $data;
}

echo get_content('http://example.com');