Is there an easier way to add menu items to a wordpress navigation menu?

Question

I'm new to Wordpress or CMS's for that matter but I'm used to the way Joomla's menus work. I have downloaded this Wordpress theme that had a navigation menu with 4 pages. So I thought I'd create a new page and select the main page as the parent. But after I go to the site the navigation doesn't show the link to the page.

So I took a look at the HTML for the menu in header_block.php and I copy and paste the about li entry and it works fine. So okay fine I can edit the menu by hand but I can't expect clients to do this. Is there an easier way of doing this? Something close to the way Joomla works? Thanks in advance.

<!-- Start Menu -->
<div class="Menu">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>">
      <?php _e('Home'); ?>
      </a></li>
    <li><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>?page_id=2">
      <?php _e('About Us'); ?>
      </a></li>
    <li><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>?m=200808">
      <?php _e('Archives'); ?>
      </a></li>
    <li><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>?page_id=38">
      <?php _e('Contact Us'); ?>
      </a></li>
<li><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>?page_id=2">
      <?php _e('About Us'); ?>
      </a></li>
  </ul>
  <div class="clr"></div>
</div>
<!-- End Menu -->

Answer 1

The wp_list_pages template tag Template Tags/wp list pages « WordPress Codex handles listing all published pages, and so will add a page to the menu of a page template when a client adds a page in the wordpress editor. Does the theme you downloaded use wp_list_pages? Or are the page URLs and CS hardcoded? Look at the wordpress default theme for an idea of how wp_list_pages is used.

Answer 2

While it's not officially out yet, something to look forward to in WordPress 3.0 is the new menu management system.