I tried using the ssl module in Python 2.6 but I was told that it wasn't available. After installing OpenSSL, I recompiled 2.6 but the problem persists.
Any suggestions?
Use the binaries provided by python.org or by your OS distributor.  It's a lot easier than building it yourself, and all the features are usually compiled in.
If you really need to build it yourself, you'll need to provide more information here about what build options you provided, what your environment is like, and perhaps provide some logs.
Adding SSL support to Python 2.6