when i access my site it says
not secured in the address bar, I have a secured checkout and the https for my homepage works but not sure how to get it to load it there everytime.

my host said the following, but i'm not sure where to add this to make it happen

Suppose you have URL like http://shop.example.com and you want your visitors to be redirected to https://shop.example.com

Here are some examples of how to force SSL. Simply place the following rules into your .htaccess file:

HTTP to HTTPS with www Redirect
This version will both redirect to HTTPS as well as add "www." to the beginning of the hostname if it is missing.

# Enable rewrite rules
RewriteEngine On


## Redirect HTTP to HTTPS with www

# Only trigger rule if a non-ssl port is being used
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !443
# Extract non-www portion of HTTP_HOST
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?(.*) [NC]
# Redirect to HTTPS with www
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.%2/$1 [R=301]

That's a totally lame response from the host. Providing you with directives to add to an Apache server configuration file when you are hosted on a Windows server isn't going to move you forward at all. There is actually some more relevant advice here: https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/support/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=106851 (post #5) that might get you pointed in the right direction.

Peter


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