WP Plugin Development: Add other actions to 'Edit Posts' screen

PHP
1

I understand this is not the WP forums, but I’m not getting help from there.

          I'm writing a plugin that hooks into the 'Edit Posts' view (the view  that lists the most recent posts in the Admin panel). In short, the  plugin allows the admin to flags which posts appear on the frontpage,  and which will appear in the regular list of "Recent Posts." I  understand that there a workarounds with this (putting the posts in a  certain category and telling WP to show posts in that category). That  workaround is not acceptable to the client as authors can select a  category when submitting a post.

I’ve used the hooks ‘manage_posts_columns’ and ‘manage_posts_custom_column,’ and I’ve gotten my custom columns to appear in the list (yay).

But I need to do more than just display data. I need to add buttons/links for the admin flag any post as “Display on Frontpage.” I have a database schema already in place.

My question is: What is the standard or best practice for this? Should I just echo out links in here?

function my_manage_posts_custom_columns($column_name, $id)
{
    echo '<a href="flag.php">Flag me!</a>';
}

Is there an API function I can call instead of just echoing HTML links?
If I do it via AJAX, how do I implement a fallback function (in case the AJAX call fails) through a plugin?

2

Maybe you’re already settled on this, but it would’ve been easy to add a box to the post write/edit screen and only show that box to administrators. Put a checkbox in it to indicate a featured post. I worry about editing the post list because WP likes to rearrange its admin interfaces so often. But even old WP 2.5 code for adding boxes to the post write/edit page would still work today I think.