This guide is designed to introduce the reader to the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) application-level protocol, and particularly the OpenSSL implementation of SSL. After a brief description of exactly what OpenSSL is, and what it is useful for, the guide will further illustrate the practical usage of OpenSSL in a client-server environment, and provide specific examples of applications which may benefit from OpenSSL. Finally, the guide will lead the user through example procedures required to use OpenSSL with the popular Apache Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) server for the purpose of serving secured web pages from your Ubuntu computer.