Module development and code questions

I'm in the midst of looking at different single sign on solutions, and I'm looking for some feedback on the relative advantages and disadvantages of the existing options -- and/or pointers toward resources I've overlooked.

Here are some of the options on my short list (in no particular order):

• The Longsight Group has a CAS-based solution.
• A pubcookie module based (obviously) on Pubcookie.
• The Single Sign On module
• OpenID -- from a thread on the development mailing list, it looks like there might be an OpenID module in the works for Drupal.
• Then, there's also Brown University's cookie-based solution, and Shibbboleth.

.

Currently, I'm looking most closely at OpenID and PubCookie. The eventual goal from all this is to create and document a system that allows single sign on between multiple Drupal sites, and Drupal sites and sites created in other open source apps. Ideally, these apps can reside on different servers, and in different domains (one of the key advantages of OpenID).

I have begun using Simplenews which appears to be just the thing I need.

However, I want to add dynamic content to the emails, like the "upcoming events" block. So I put in a php snippet. This works fine.

The problem I am having is that the urls are not absolute. The link is "node/17" because this is all the event module does with it. The full url is added later in the page construction process.

Any suggestions?

I'm using 4.6 and want to send an email every 2 weeks to all registered users on the site with links to the new content in the past 2 weeks. I was wondering what the best way to go about this was. Has anyone ever coded something to do this? I've been looking at the various mail modules on the site:

I'd like to begin learning more about Drupal and PHP. I don't know PHP or any other programming really, although I've done some work with VBA to create some macros and user forms in Word. So, I'm seeking some suggestions about a recommended setup to learn PHP, specifically, how it's used to run Drupal modules and themes.

This is following up on the patch discussed in http://drupal.org/node/26467, I suppose:

Announcing a new module: Contact List

This module expands the features of the site wide contact form. It eliminates the need for the drop down category menu by generating a contact form, and a unique path, for each of the contact form categories.