Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is used to keep web or intranet transactions private using encryption. Applying a SSL certificate to a site provides the users with confidence in using that site knowing the transaction is secure. You can apply the SSL certificate on top of Central Administration as well to keep all transmission of confidential information secure when configuring SharePoint.

By default, SharePoint Central Administration site uses the server name and a random port number (ex- http://spelserver:48583). However, you can change this address to be something more friendly by using the Alternate Access Mapping feature. Watch this video to see all the steps needed to make this change.

An instance of a service application is created to provide a service (like Search, BCS, User Profile etc) to one or more web applications. Brand new in SharePoint 2010, Service Applications replace the old method of defining Shared Service Providers. This video shows how you can create an instance of a service application manually.

A feature in SharePoint 2010 called Developer Dashboard lets you analyze performance of your SharePoint pages. It is not only useful for developers, as the name suggests, but can also be used by IT professionals and site administrators to monitor how their site is performing and analyze for bottlenecks.

Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms. The terms are managed in the Term Store, in Central Administration. You can define, and then use these terms as attributes for items in your SharePoint farm. For example, you could create a list of vendors as a term set that can be centrally managed and the terms (each vendor) from this term set can be used as metadata (or columns) within lists or libraries. This scenario is demonstrated in this video.