[Mediawiki-l] Upgrading from 1.6.1 to 1.11 not going well

[Sandy Rozhon]

I've copied all the files to the server and made the config folder 
writable, but when I try to run update.php I get the following error:

"Access forbidden!
You don't have permission to access the requested object. It is 
either read-protected or not readable by the server. "

Then I tried renaming LocalSettings.php to LocalSettings.old.php and 
just browsing to the wiki, but that gives me this error:

"Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in 
/home/sandy/htdocs/brooklyn/includes/UserMailer.php on line 46"

Is there another folder or file that needs to be writable?

Sandy