cURL is the way the plugin gathers information from several outside video services, and how the plugin saves the thumbnails to your server. I’d talk to your hosting provider (or search Google for threads about your host and cURL) to see if it can be activated on your site.
thanx a lot. i’m working on the template locally so i’m trying to install cURL services on waamp local server to let the plugin work properly. if i manage to activate it, i’ll check on my online hosting provider then. thank you.
pardon it’s xaamp not waaamp.
It is possible to get rid of the libcurl dependencies in the code. However libcurl makes the code more maintainable and is one of the most commonly installed libraries, so it’s a sensible dependency unless many people will encounter the same problem as above.
One of the reasons to use cURL in this plugin is that the possible error messages are more informative.
When I started this plugin I wasn’t very familiar with WordPress, but since then I’ve learned a lot. WordPress has an HTTP API with a handy function named wp_remote_get that I’m planning on using in place of cURL. This should make the plugin more friendly with more server setups because the function tries multiple PHP methods for making the HTTP request.
That’s a welcome change for those who haven’t yet gotten into the group of people enjoying Video Thumbnails 🙂
Have you worked on the wp_remote_get function yet? My company has our own servers, and we don’t have libcurl activated.
It’s been a while since I looked into the this plugin’s code. If I remember correctly, it should be pretty easy to do the switch to wp_remote_get() and that I used it when making some of my first patches for the plugin before later converting the patches to use cURL to be more consistent with the rest of the plugin.
If you have a bit of PHP experience you might be able to do the switch to wp_remote_get() yourself. Activating libcurl should be equally easy depending on your server policies.
Before doing further tweaking it might be worth getting a copy of the 2.0 beta in case it has solved the issue already: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/video-thumbnails-20-beta Giving a bit of feedback for that version should be most welcome too to get the final version out one day.
I haven’t had much time to dedicate to this lately, but I believe I have already replaced any cURL specific code with wp_remote_get in 2.0, just haven’t had the time to tie up any loose ends for a release.
Okay.. I also tried to sign up for the Beta so I can use it, but haven’t yet gotten approved for that.
