>I checked the firewall and added in an exception which has made a difference but presented a different problem. if i connect to http://www.mysite.com i get an error saying that you must connect using a secure address. When I connect using https://www.mysite.com it works but gets redirected to http://
>I don't know why it would redirect to the standard http:// setting, any ideas welcome

At that level, I would check it as the IIS level. If that sites runs only for https, then, it should use port 443 only and not 80. I would check for something related to that.