I'm at my wit's end and really hoping someone can help me out here. I'm doing a first time installation of Zenphoto because I'd love to be able to use the product but I can't run setup.php. I'm getting various syntax errors when I try, such as:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_AS, expecting '(' in domain/zp-core/functions.php on line 1654

and

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected =, expecting '(' in domain/zp-core/functions.php on line 486

As soon as I alter the line of one, another one seems to pop up. I feel like it's going to be a never-ending battle if I keep this up. I'm seeing it in functions.php and functions-basic.php mostly it seems like.

I've checks the directory and file permissions and both are set as they should be (755/644) and I've made sure it's on MySQL5+. My host is 1and1.com and I've seen others have trouble with them but I'm not encountering the 500 error and I didn't use the script installer, I manually installed through FTP access because I wanted full control over the product.

Any help would be appreciated because I'm at the point where unless I figure something out, I'm going to have to give up on trying Zenphoto out.

Are you perhaps on PHP4 ?

Following up on fretzl's thought, try creating a php.ini and manually setting the php version to be used. The installation package should require zero fiddling with the code.

If this is the case the host should be contacted. It varies how you are able/allowed to switch php versions from host to host.

Very true, for 1&1 specifically though I will refer the OP to these guides:

http://m.help.1and1.com/hosting-c37630/linux-c85098/php-c37728/change-the-default-version-of-php-in-the-control-panel-a792330.html

http://help.1and1.com/hosting-c37630/linux-c85098/php-c37728/manually-set-the-version-of-php-using-an-htaccess-file-a614325.html