setup apache with ssl

[gottaBeLinux]

Boss says" Hey Ryan, set up a secure webserver on Linux for me." I say" ok, give me a week."
Yea right!
took me a week to get RedHat installed.
Been 3 straight days trying to setup apache with ssl.

Anyone help?
Links to a howto
docs, faqs, other forums, anything.

I downloaded mod_ssl from modssl.org
Their installation readme says get modssl, openssl, perl, and gzip.
Did that.
Followed instructions for unpacking with commands like this
gzip -d -c mod_ssl-2.8.11-1.3.x.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Don't know exactly what that means but i guess it's like unzipping the tarball? (zipped files are called tarballs?)
All those tarballed files appear to unpack successfully.

Next step says configure and build open ssl library.
config, then make, then cd ..
I believe that worked because building went on for nearly 5 minutes.

Now i'm at the point where i apply mod_ssl source extensions to the apache source tree...
commands -
cd mod_ssl-2.8.11-1.3.27
./configure \
--with-apache=../apache_1.3.27 \
--with-ssl=../openssl-0.9.6g \
--prefix=/path/to/apache \
cd ..

I get error >cannot find apache source tree under ../apache_1.3
I've changed that to every path on the box.
searched for apache and got about 20 different dirs.
/usr/sbin
/usr/local
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/apache
etc....

Did i make a mistake in an earlier step?
where is apache source tree?

if anyone reads all this and helps.....your ok in my book

Ryan "Captain of the Linux newbies"

[gottaBeLinux]

Would it be easier for me to use Apache-SSL instead of mod_ssl with apache. Not sure I understand the difference but if one is easier to setup and administer...I'm all for it.

RC