Display external remote HTML in a Joomla Template

This document is a little more general than having to be for Joomla.  It should work in any PHP environment.
What I'm wanting to do is have one file that I can change externally that I can display the HTML from on all of my sites .  Heres the code

 $filename = "http://www.yourdomain.com/linksfooter.php";
       $handle = fopen($filename, "r");    

$contents = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);

echo $contents;
            ?>