What is SSL? How do you create certificates?

SSL: Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents via the internet. SSL works by useing a private key to encrypt data that`s transferred over the SSL connection. Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer support SSL and many Web sites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. By convention, Web pages that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http