Add new menu dir, or custom menu to panel, or nautilus URL

After upgrading to Red Hat 9, I lost one of my custom menu directories; 
I used to have a menu "Remote" (for contacting other hosts in various 
different ways) with several sub menus, which was set up for GNOME 1.4 
by adding the appropriate file hierarchy on /etc/X11/applnk/Remote. I 
could also set up the panel to give direct access to the menu, simply 
by selecting "Add Menu" (or whatever it was called, I don't quite 
remember) from right-click menu, then setting menu directory to /etc/
X11/applnk/Remote in preferences for the new menu buttons.

In GNOME 2, my entries are nowhere to be found with the default menu 
setup, and there is no way to add custom menus to the panel, as far as 
I can tell. I'm now wondering what would be the best way to re-add 
these menus. I could edit /etc/X11/desktop-menus/applications.menu to 
insert some new folders, I guess, but as everything is normally auto-
generated, might be a bit tedious. Also, I'm not sure I want these 
menus in Applications - I think perhaps I prefer the panel button 
functionality.

Another approach might be to set up Nautilus to display the correct 
data for URL remote:/// or similar, but I'm not sure how to do that (or 
if it's possible.)

Any recommendations?

- Toralf