got it sorted now thnx, my oscommerce config needed tweaking . thnx.
for those of you wanting to use the shared ssl with Oscommerce this is my configure.php. substitute the puma.eukhost.com/~secret to match your own.
All images will be pulled from secure and therefore show in both secure and http
PHP Code:
// Define the webserver and path parameters
// * DIR_FS_* = Filesystem directories (local/physical)
// * DIR_WS_* = Webserver directories (virtual/URL)
define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.secret-desire.co.uk'); // eg, http://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://puma.eukhost.com/~secret/'); // eg, https://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers
define('ENABLE_SSL', true); // secure webserver for checkout procedure?
define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'www.secret-desire.co.uk');
define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', '');
define('HTTP_COOKIE_PATH', '/');
define('HTTPS_COOKIE_PATH', '');
define('DIR_WS_HTTP_CATALOG', '/');
define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG', '');
define('DIR_WS_IMAGES', 'https://puma.eukhost.com/~secret/images/');