The site I'm currently working on includes profile pages for each author plus a method to search for posts by a specific author. So we would have a page at `/author/author-name/` that only displays a list of posts by that author and a page at something like `/author/author-name/profile/` that shows extended user info but no posts.

By default Wordpress includes an `author.php` template that shows some basic user info and recent posts by the author. This is found at `/author/author-name/`. When looking for recommended ways to build a user profile, everything I have found recommends altering this file and using the same URL, however we would like to use both.

The only way I can think of achieving this would be to allow the page to take a parameter so that `/author/author-name/?profile=1`, rewrite it in `.htaccess` so that it appears as `/author/author-name/profile/`. Then alter `author.php` to check for this parameter and use a separate template. I would like to avoid methods such as this and stay on the Wordpress rails as much as possible.

Are there any plugins or other Wordpress approved methods I could use to solve this problem? (We're running 3.8 by the way).