Yup, I think it's a shared server issue, probably some stricter policies, kinda weird cause
* is allowed as a sub-delim.
I fixed it by editing utils.php (  if (strpos($route,"$") !== false) { etc etc ) and using a "$"
instead of a "*".
On this server, short_open_tag isn't allowed either, <?= IS allowed.

Regarding the "site/", this one gave me troubles:
core\bootstrap.php line 14
$site_root = $server_root."site/";