I've been taking this course and finding it helpful. It's free, the instructor is easy to follow, and the mini projects are sometimes fun.
https://www.udacity.com/course/programming-foundations-with-python--ud036
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-ssl-certificate-on-apache-for-debian-7 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-ssl-certificate-on-apache-for-ubuntu-12-04
Try first with a self signed cert then try with a "real" cert you can get a valid cert from startssl.com
Best is to just try something like this and struggle as much as possible until you figure it out: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-a-basic-ldap-server-on-an-ubuntu-12-04-vps
Online courses: RHCSA
Books....hmmm. UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (5th Edition)
But honestly, I could write up a crash course for selinux and iptables. I should host a blog somewhere.
EDIT: Forgot the most important parts, /r/selinux and /r/linuxadmin !