So we have a real-estate-related site that has controller/action pairs like "homes/view", "realtors/edit", and so forth. From on high it has been deemed a good idea to refactor the site so that URLS are now in the format "/realtorname/homes/view/id", and perhaps also "/admin/homes/view/id" and/or "/region/..."

As a mere CakePHP novice I'm finding it difficult to achieve this in routes.php. I can do the likes of:

Router::connect('/:filter/h/:id', array('controller'=>'homes','action'=>'view'));
Router::connect('/admin/:controller/:action/:id');

But I'm finding that the id is no longer being passed simply and elegantly to the actions, now that controller and action do not directly follow the domain. Therefore, questions:

• Is it a stupid idea to play fast and loose with the /controller/action format in this way?
• Is there a better way of stating these routes so that things don't break egregiously?
• Would we be better off going back to subdomains (the initial method of achieving this type of functionality, shot down on potentially spurious SEO-related grounds)?

Many thanks for any advice! I'm sorry that I'm such a newbie that I don't know whether I'm asking stupid questions or not....