During installation, i get this;

• CURL requires SSL support. Please notify webmaster or hosting company. 51 => SSL: certificate subject name 'zen-cart.com' does not match target host name 'www.zen-cart.com'

wouldn't this url resolve anyway

What step of install do you see this?
Is this local or on a web server

Before I even get started, in the "Prerequisites" step.

It's on a webserver (ApolloServers)

Check with them and insure that they have curl compiled in with their php stack

well pre said this;

PHP O/S = Linux

PHP API Mode = apache2handler

PHP Max Execution Time per page = 30

Register Globals = OFF

MySQL Support = ON

MySQL Version = 4.1.20

PHP Version = 5.2.5

PHP Safe Mode = OFF

PHP Sessions Support = ON

PHP Session.AutoStart = OFF

PHP session.use_trans_sid = OFF

Suggested SQL Cache Folder = /home/webadmin/athensartandframe.com/html/catalog/cache

PHP magic_quotes_runtime setting = OFF

PHP magic_quotes_sybase setting = OFF

PHP GD Support = ON

GD Version = GD bundled (2.0.34 compatible)

PHP ZLIB Compression Support = ON

PHP OpenSSL Support = ON

PHP cURL Support = ON

CURL NON-SSL Capability = Okay

CURL SSL Capability = CURL requires SSL support. Please notify webmaster or hosting company. 51 => SSL: certificate subject name 'zen-cart.com' does not match target host name 'www.zen-cart.com' Click here for more info

PHP Upload Support = ON upload_max_filesize=2M; post_max_size=32M

I get this

# CURL NON-SSL Capability = Okay
# CURL SSL Capability = Okay

Looking > certificate subject name 'zen-cart.com' does not match target host name 'www.zen-cart.com'
It would appear that somehow you have a certificate around for
zen-cart.com, I don't know why you would???

Something's very odd if you're seeing it looking for 'zen-cart.com' instead of 'www.zen-cart.com', given that the code specifically attempts to connect to 'www.zen-cart.com' at the point where you're seeing that unusual error message.

It suggests your server has some very odd configuration settings in it. Either that or you've been hacking away at the code and changing how it normally works.