Xampp download from external servers

[Torp]

Hi,
I've a local site which should download some plugins from different servers.

I've read that (probably) is neccesary the extension "curl" so I installed the following packages from Synaptic:
* curl
* php5-curl
* libcurl3
then I enabled the relative extension in /opt/lamp/etc/php.ini removing the semicolon:
* extension=php_curl.dll
(I did the same in /opt/lamp/etc/php.ini-pre1.7.2, but I don't know if it's neccessary).

Unfortunately I can't download from external servers.

Is "curl" the only thing that I need?

Thanks

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Edit
In particular, I'm talking about a local installation of DokuWiki, and I can't handle (download or update) plugins from the Extansion Manager pannel because I recive the error message:
"The plugin repository could not be contacted. Make sure your server is allowed to contact www.dokuwiki.org and check your proxy settings."