Installing and upgrading help

If your web host does not have a later compatible version of PHP, then you will need to go to 2.8 instead of 2.9 until they change that. 

The Slash arguments message should not stop the install - you can check the setting in your admin settings under Server/HTTP.

Elaine,

Though there are side-by-side versions of MariaDB and MySQL that matches the versions numbers, like 5.x.x of MySQL will as well be available as 5.x.x of MariaDB.

But, recently MariaDB have released another branch starting from version 10.x.x together with their already available branch series of 5.x.x

now your webhost have installed the 10.0.14 version, and whilst install, you may be choosing MySQL as your installation database, so try choosing MariaDB as your database, like shown below (if doing a new install).

Else if you want to modify current install, then simply try changing the config.php and choosing "mariadb" as database driver rather "mysqli" ----> but I doubt on version 10 it will work straight away.

This MAY solve your issue, though choosing MySQL where MariaDB is installed shouldn't be an issue as MariaDB is drop-in replacement for MySQL as well, but only for version 5.x.x series, not sure about version 10.x series.

btw, which hosting provider are you with? (want to know who is dumb enough to install 10 series rather than usual 5 series MariaDB)

Petr Skoda  Thank you.  It seems so obvious now.

The system administrators at my hosting company had this for 3 days and could only advise me to upgrade.

Much appreciated.  The installation has run without any problems.

Thank you Usman. My hosting company is 123-reg.  I have passed on the solution to them in case they have other clients with the same issue.