structure for one site with public and internal areas?

Hello –

I’m heading into building a site for an organization and want to use WP as a CMS for them. The issue is that they really have two needs: a public-facing, information website and then a “members only” area. I’ve identified a theme for the public area and feel comfortable with that part. But, I think it will be difficult to maintain the “members only” area at the same time and was thinking of installing a separate blog for that – can I do that under a sub-domain (e.g. members.domain.com)? I’ve searched the forums and read the posts I found on using two themes but I couldn’t really establish if it was possible to do that using a subdomain. If I was able to do that, then they can establish a log in and post the internal communication/blog there, where as the WP theme for the public-facing area is more content management. That would be ideal.

See, they have two real blog needs (one is more “news and announcements” while the other is internal communication) so if I can’t do that, do I need to have a second domain to link to and use? Or do you have any other recommendations?

I’d like to make it as easy as possible to build and maintain but the restrictions and different uses are important.

Thanks for your assistance –
Alexa