How to test if a port is open and running

For the port which are not secured, do the following:

telnet www.somesite 80
GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.somesite

For the ports which are secured, do the following:

openssl s_client -connect www.somesite:443 

For the server uses self-signed certificate and secured port, do the following:

openssl s_client -connect 12.34.56.78:443 -servername www.somesite

The servername should be the server name specified in the TLS certificate