Conditionals work if they're structured correctly, I ran into this issue and figured it out.
For conditionals, the tag before else
has to be paired with the end tag of the previous if
otherwise the statements will evaluate separately and produce an error.
ERROR!
<% if(true){ %>
<h1>foo</h1>
<% } %>
<% else{ %>
<h1>bar</h1>
<% } %>
Correct
<% if(true){ %>
<h1>foo</h1>
<% } else{ %>
<h1>bar</h1>
<% } %>
hope this helped.