The better way

• Have one Master Template which controls the wrapper or main layout of the page
• Have two child templates that use the Master as a parent
• Master
  • Home Page
  • Following Pages

Now you will have all the static layouts like header and footer in one place and easily managed. Plus the layouts for the following and the homepage are in one place and easy to manage. At the time of page creation, you just select the page layout you want.

How this works is:

• You select the correct page template for the page (say, Home Page)
• The topmost parent for the page is found (Master)
  • Then all page templates which are children, are added to the HTML sent to the browser
    • Master
      • Home Page
• Because templates cascade, you can have very complex template structures if needed.
• Of course, with more complexity comes more maintenance work so we suggest you keep it as simple as possible