How to force file_get_contents to work

Question

It was a while that I use the function file_get_contents to get html data from a website. but today it dosen't, to see why I've used :

$html = @file_get_contents('http://www.thewebsite.com/');
if(!$html)
   exit( "Oops. Error :)" );    

And this show me the error message. So perhaps they have prevent somehow the connection.

Please masters how could I force the function to get the contents ?

EDIT :

This give this error :

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.thewebsite.com/) 
       [<a href='function.file-get-contents'>function.file-get-contents</a>]: 
       failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! 

PS I've tried another website and this works fine

Answer 1

1. Remove warning suppression
2. Turn on error reporting
3. Check the messages in error_log You should see detailed error message instead of "Oops. Error." Then you will know why it doesn't work

Answer 2

According to manual page . A URL can be used as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. Did you really check if every url return false and gave error. Then obviously you need to check settings.