Modifying 1.5 control panel menu names and defaults

I’m using WP to create a site that starts out mostly static (hello Pages), and will be adding weblog elements later on.

In order to reduce confusion for my client (new to web in general), I’m changing “Posts” to “News” or “Newsposts” .. so she knows she’s working on pages, and that work on news-stuff will come later on.

First, a description of what I’ve done so far (hey! WP tip!). Then: questions for how to change some default behaviors.

To change menu text , first back up copies of these three files in /wp-admin/
menu.php
edit-form.php
index.php

Open menu.php.
On line 19, locate the part where it says
array(__('Write Post')
I changed it to read
array(__('Write News')

On line 22, locate the part where it says
array(__('Posts')
I changed it to read
array(__('Newsposts')

That takes care of the menu. Now, to change the H2 tag on the edit form itself.
Open edit-form.php.
On line 3, inside the <h2> tags, you’ll find this:
<?php _e('Write Post'); ?>
Substitute News for Post, so it reads
<?php _e('Write News'); ?>

Open index.php.
On line 17
<h3><?php _e('Posts'); ?>
Change ‘Posts’ to ‘Newsposts’.
Later in the line do the same thing:
Find
<a href="edit.php" title="<?php _e('More posts... '); ?>
and change to
<a href="edit.php" title="<?php _e('More newsposts...'); ?>

I’m still deciding about other changes to make on the Dashboard. It’d be better to display recently edited/modified Pages, while we’re working on building the site. Any ideas how to do that? (I have yet to take a look at the dashboard modify plugin)

Now….. for questions.

I would like to make the WP Control Panel work so that when clicking the Write menu item (top row), the default submenu item that displays is Write Page (currently displays Write News, née Write Post).
Likewise, I would like to make it so that when clicking the menu item Manage (top row), the default submenu item that displays is Pages and (Currently displays Newsposts, née Posts).

I see from menu.php that each menu item is given an array number (assigned in increments of 5 or 10). I considered rearranging either the order or the array numbering, but I’m really outta my league, code-wise.) Any ideas for how to change which submenu item is displayed as default?