Https
 

how do i set up a secure web server where pages are served through the https protocol?

you need to load apache with ssl

to elaborate a little...

You need apache webserver from http://httpd.apache.org/ pached with the SSL module from http://www.modssl.org/.

The patch is a source code patch, and for now, you have to recompile apache. That is unless you download a precompiled version for your system. There are precompiled apache+modssl binaries around I'm sure. You'll have to look around.

The documentation on these sites will probably help you further.