How should I structure a site with content dependent on visitor type (not user)?
- by Pedr
I have a website that displays different content depending on two selections made by a visitor: Whether they are a teacher or student, and their learning level (from 4 options). Everything is public and they don't need to authenticate to access the content. Depending on their selection, different content is displayed across the whole site, other than a contact and about page. The tone of the language changes depending on whether the visitor is a student or teacher and the materials available on each page also change depending on the learning level, however in all cases, the structure of the site is identical.
Currently I'm using a cookie to store the visitor's selections and render different content appropriately, so I have a single set of URLs which display different content depending on the cookie, with one of the permutations as default.
I appreciate this is far from ideal, but what is the better option? Would I be better using a distinguishing segment for each selection, for example:
http://example.com/teacher/lv3/resources/activities
http://example.com/teacher/lv4/resources/activities
http://example.com/student/lv4/resources/activities
etc.
What is the most sensible way to handle this situation?
