First of all you have to download cURL. This can be done here. I recommend Windows users to download the binary files with SSL disabled. Instructions for installing cURL in other environments can be found in the cURL documentation. To install on Windows, copy the file curl.exe to you Windows System32 folder and open the command prompt. How to do this can be found here. Now write curl in the command prompt and hit Return. You should get a response similar to this:

curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information

This means that you have installed it correctly and that the command prompt can find cURL. Now type curl followed by the URL to your favorite web page, e.g. curl http://www.iglauser.com and see what happens.

If you like me, is using a lot of PHP when developing sites, you can find useful information of how to control cURL through PHP in the PHP: cURL Manual.

If you are running a XAMPP server, cURL is by default disabled. To activate cURL for your XAMPP server follow these steps:

1. Go to the XAMPP directory of your server
2. Open bin directory in the Apache folder
3. Open the php.ini file with a text editor
4. Search for the text “;extension=php_curl.dll” and remove the semicolon (;) from the text
5. Save the changes to the php.ini file
6. Restart your apache server

Good luck cURL’ing!