This blog is protected by the most excellent Spam Karma plugin and is hosted on the most excellent host, Dreamhost.

There’s one small problem with this set-up, though. Spam Karma uses the allow_url_fopen() functionality of PHP, which Dreamhost has disabled for security reasons.

What follows is a replacement function that rewrites one function using cURL to achieve the same goals, thus allowing full SK2 functionality on Dreamhost.

In the file sk2_functions.php, replace function sk2_get_url_content with this:

function sk2_get_url_content($url, $level = 0, $convert_case = false)
{
	if ($level > 8)
		return "";

	$buffer = "";

	$curl_handle=curl_init();
	curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,2);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
	$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
	curl_close($curl_handle);

	if ($level >= 0)
		if (preg_match_all("/< (script|iframe) [^>]*src=”([^”]*)”[^>]*>/”, $buffer, $matches))
		{
			foreach ($matches[2] as $match)
			{
				$buffer .= “**embedded:$match**”;
				$new_url = $match;
				if (! strncmp($new_url, “http”, 7))
					$new_url = $url . “/” . $new_url;

				$buffer .= “***\n” . sk2_get_url_content($new_url, $level+1);
			}
		}

	return $buffer;
}

Note that the timeout is pretty tight, I don’t like waiting. So, if you have a slower connection (or more patience) you might want to increase the value of CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT.

Also, in the file sk2_referrer_check_plugin.php there are checks for allow_url_fopen(), which we can now safely comment out:

function filter_this(&$cmt_object)
	{
		if (! $cmt_object->is_trackback())
			return;

		/*
		jason [at] ushmitsudoki [dot] com - 20050427
		won't be needing to check this anymore

		if( ! ini_get('allow_url_fopen'))
		{
			$this->log_msg("allow_url_fopen is disabled on this PHP install: sk2_referrer_check_plugin cannot run.” , 5);
			return;
		}
		*/

and one more edit in the same file:

function output_plugin_UI()
	{
		echo "
“;
		parent::output_plugin_UI(false); // call default constructor

		/*
		jason [at] ushmitsudoki [dot] com  - 20050427
		won’t be needing to check this anymore

		if(! ini_get(’allow_url_fopen’))
			echo “

allow_url_fopen is disabled on this PHP install: TB Referrer Check plugin cannot run. You should disable it.



“;
		*/
		echo “

“;
	}

Finally, I’m not a WordPress, PHP, or SpamKarma developer, so use this at your own peril. Corrections and comments welcome.