Change Permalink from post-name to /category/post-name/

Codex guide: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_Permalinks

I know that place, but if I were to change the permalinks, would it break the website? That is the question.

How would re-doing the permalinks help the website? In the main wordpress website says, it does not recoment using /%postname%/ it says: “Starting Permalinks with %postname% is strongly not recommended for performance reasons”

Why would they say that? I have not done any SEO on this website, so changes right now would be the way to go. But I want to make sure I am running this website in the best possible settings. What would any one recommend?

What would it be the most recommended action?

SEO experts give their recommendations on what they think is best from a ‘google standpoint’

the Codex is giving instructions based on technical WordPress issues

so the viewpoints may conflict

I use %category%/%postname% and it works great on my site.

I use %category%/%postname% and it works great on my site.

Eek!

See https://ottopress.com/2010/category-in-permalinks-considered-harmful/ for why this isn’t a good idea.

Oh yeah….I’ve read that…which made me consider changing it up. I set it like that a while back after reading all the ‘SEO expert’ stuff.

Once I had it in place, I never bothered changing it. I guess I should have qualified my response by saying I only have maybe 10 ‘pages’ so I don’t really run into an issue….. everything is posts on my site

I may have to change it one of these days again……

I have close to 4,000 close to 5000 pages. So I do know if it is or will be my problem.

I would strongly suggest using a permalink structure that starts with a numeric – as per the advice in the article I listed above.