I have what for me at least is an intriguing best practices question.
Given an existing site whose directory structure looks, in relevant part, like this:
root
__public
____benefits.php
__members
____benefits.php
where the two PHP files differ from one another only in the inclusion or exclusion of one or two components (which will presumably become embedded Weblogs in EE), what is the best strategy for organizing the content in EE?
1. Sectioned as at present with completely separate templates
In this case, I’d have one template group called public, one called members, and each would have a template called info which would have several entries, one of which would be named benefits. The URLs would be:
http://www.mysite.com/public/info/benefits
http://www.mysite.com/members/info/benefits
2. Structured more along common content lines to reduce total number of templates
In this case, I’d have a single template group called, perhaps, info, and a template called benefits which presents the proper content elements depending on whether the user is a logged-in member or not. (I’m not yet 100% clear on how I’d invoke the conditional logic here but I’m sure it can be done.)
In this case, I’d have a URL:
http://www.mysite.com/info/benefits
which would show one page view to members and one to non-members.
Perhaps more accurately and consistently, since I may have several pages that could share a template, I’d add a template called “details” and the entities would be called “benefits” and other similar names, resulting in a URL like:
http://www.mysite.com/info/details/benefits
The former seems cleaner and more understandable in terms of traditional UR reading, but the second one seems more elegant and efficient because it only needs one template.
Perhaps there’s a third way I’m overlooking?
All insights appreciated.