You need to contact your host and have them turn on
allow_url_fopen=on
or
allow_url_fopen = 1

If you have a copy of the php.ini file in the root of your site, find allow_url_fopen and set it to allow_url_fopen = 1
yes, that's what it was: allow_url_fopen=on

Why it didn't work the first time I set it I don't know. The only thing I can think is sometimes changes don't happen right away, like there is caching going on. Anyway that solved my problem.