Multiple templates for a custom post type

Mobile might not be a great example — responsive design would take care of that.

Were this my project I would take a slightly different approach. Instead of prefixing the URL, I would stick the mobile on the end with an rewrite endpoint. An endpoint combined with using the template_include filter would work.

So you end up with a permalink structure like this

/{post_type}/{post_slug}

/{post_type}/{post_slug}/mobile

There are many answers that explain this elsewhere. For the mobile endpoint.

<?php
add_action('init', 'wpse74553_add_endpoints');
function wpse74553_add_endpoints()
{
    // EP_ALL adds the endpoint to everything.
    add_rewrite_endpoint('mobile', EP_ALL);
}

// this makes the naked `mobile` endpoint work vs. having to
// use something `mobile/works`.
add_filter('request', 'wpse74553_filter_request');
function wpse74553_filter_request( $vars )
{
    if(isset($vars['mobile']))
        $vars['mobile'] = true;

    return $vars;
}

From there you can hook into template_include filter and change the template if the mobile query variable is set.

<?php
add_filter('template_include', 'wpse74553_include');
function wpse74553_include($t)
{
    if(get_query_var('mobile'))
    {
         // you have a request with the mobile endpoint
         $t="mobile-template.php";
    }

    return $t;
}

The only thing to watch out for is that template_include fires on every request. It’s not specific — so if you want to use it, you’ll probably need to do more checking than above. There’s also a bunch of more specific filters; take a look in wp-includes/template.php to get an idea, specifically the function get_query_template.

For single posts you could use the single_template filter, for instance.

In short, you’re not at all limited by the template hierarchy, you can change it at will with the template_include or any of the {{type}}_template filters.

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