[wp-hackers] Post/Page "Types"?

[Mike Schinkel]

Hi All:

I've been working with Drupal for 1.5 years but was recently developed some
plugins for WordPress and came away liking WordPress an awful lot.  

Still there are some things Drupal does that WordPress doesn't do that I
need for future WordPress projects and I was wondering if anything like this
has been discussed in the past and/or if there is a plugin I'm not familiar
with that addresses this.

First some background for those that don't know Drupal. In WordPress you
have the "wp_posts" where either "Posts", "Pages", or attachments are stored
(if I understand correctly.) In Drupal there is a table analogous to
"wp_posts" called "node" where all content is stored. In Drupal "node"
table's "type" field is similar to WordPress' "post_type" field in the
"wp_posts" table.  Yet unlike in WordPress where you have first-class Posts
or Pages, Drupal can have an infinite number of different "content types" so
that there are no "special" types in Drupal (even though there are some
default types like "Page" on installation.) 

Let's say I wanted to create a website listing companies like you might find
at http://crunchbase.com. In Drupal I'd use the CCK module and create a new
content type called "Company" and define the additional fields I'd want for
the company.  In addition I'd be able to create a theme template that is
specific to a node of type "company."  

It would be really useful if I could do something similar in WordPress, for
example say I could create a "company" post_type and store in the "wp_posts"
table but as a "company" and not as a "post" or "page" yet I'd still be able
to use features like categories and tags. Further I'd want to define custom
fields that would apply to just each company (like "CEO name", "Phone
Number", etc.) and then be able to create a theme template that would apply
to a company and a URL that would apply to a company.

What are your thoughts on this?  Is anyone trying to address this with any
of the existing plugins and/or with future plans for WordPress.  Further,
does it make any sense in future versions to genericize posts/pages and
allow a power user to configure them in the admin where each "post type"
would get configured to have a defined set of URLs, and logic like "Uses
Tags", "Uses Categories" etc?

Thanks in advance for the help and discussion.

-Mike Schinkel 
http://mikeschinkel.com