Do redirects and URL rewriting in WordPress break site functionality?

Question

WordPress

Hello. We are currently developing an online store on WooCommerce, where we want to transfer the site from MODX.

I insist on keeping the structure of the old site where possible. To do this, you need to set up redirects and rewrite the URL format in WordPress. The developer tells me that the functionality of the site may break and the scripts will not work correctly and that let it be as it is by default in WP.

For a general understanding at what stage of development: WordPress + WooCommerce is now deployed and the design is pulled. It remains to fill in the goods and finalize the FrontEnd.

Because I do not have enough qualifications to assess the complexity of the task I have set, I ask you for advice. Am I setting a difficult task, or is the programmer trying to splurge on me and better find someone else?

Thanks in advance for your opinion.

Answer 1

Good afternoon!

Because I do not have enough qualifications to assess the complexity of the task I have set, I ask you for advice. Am I setting a difficult task, or is the programmer trying to splurge on me and better find someone else?

To give a more objective answer to your question, you need to know the structure of the urls of your old site and the new site.
In this case, your developer knows better what could be wrong with the url structure. That we, that you, are "people from the outside" and it's hard to say something.
In short, there are certain basic variables used in WP & WC in the url structure:
for example,

product-category
product-tag

They are edited in the Settings - Permalinks section.
You can of course change the urls, but as your developer said, you should do it with caution.
https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/permalinks/
https://www.perfectseourl.com/support/seo-tips-tri...
If I were you, I would set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones. When transferring products, I usually develop parsers that collect information about products (including old URLs), then publish via the Woocommerce REST API, get new product URLs, match them (for example, you can export to some xls). And then all this is added to htaccess for redirects.