Problems installing Themes and Plugins

My domain and host is with 1&1. I finally got the newest version of wordpress uploaded through my ftp uploader. I ran into a few problems in multiple attempts to see the blog through my site. I believe I installed wordpress successfully, but I couldn’t see the blog by just typing in my domain. I eventually found a way to see the blog by typing in the address bar http://www.mydomain.com/index.php. That seemed to do the trick.

I can now see the default blog theme from my domain and can now access the wordpress login and admin side. But here is my new problem. When I try to download any random theme or plugin inside the wordpress admin area, it says, “Downloading install package from http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/shiword.1.11.zip…” and that’s it. No matter how long I let it sit, nothing happens. Nothing is downloading or installing. No internet activity. Same thing happens when I try to download any random plugin.

So then I try to install the theme manually by extracting the zip file and uploading it directly through my ftp uploader into the wp-content/themes file.

I am able to do this and it then puts the theme in my menu of available themes, but if I want to “Activate” it or “Preview” it, I get this error message: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘=’, expecting ‘)’ in /homepages/3/d357778996/htdocs/wp-content/themes/arras/library/admin/options.php on line 216

I’m at a complete loss as to what to do. Any ideas or suggestions?