You absolutely do NOT need to resort to COM objects for this.
The [man]fopen[/man] function can usually accept a URL instead of a filename. Then you can [man]fread[/man] the page just as if it were a local file. Better yet, just use [man]file_get_contents[/man]:
$webpage = file_get_contents("http://www.example.com/somepage.php?signup=bob");
If you need to simulate a POST form instead of a GET form, the [man]curl[/man] related functions offer more power than fopen (though more complexity too).
