Brooklyn WordPress Theme

Brooklyn is still a viable choice for creative and business sites. It has a mature codebase, regular updates, and strong demo variety. The main trade-off is its proprietary page builder, which creates lock-in. If you’re starting a new site and are comfortable staying in Brooklyn’s ecosystem, it performs well. If portability matters, consider a theme built on Elementor or the block editor instead.

Brooklyn has its own built-in page builder and is not designed to work alongside Elementor. You can technically activate Elementor on a Brooklyn site, but the two builders conflict on layout pages. Most Brooklyn users stick with the native builder. If you want an Elementor-based setup, a different theme is a better starting point than trying to force the two together.

Create a new folder in wp-content/themes named brooklyn-child. Add a style.css with the correct header including Template: brooklyn, and a functions.php that enqueues the parent stylesheet using wp_enqueue_style with the parent handle as a dependency. Activate the child theme from the WordPress dashboard. Any custom CSS or PHP goes into the child theme to survive Brooklyn updates safely.

Yes, Brooklyn has built-in WooCommerce support. Product pages, cart, and checkout are styled to match the theme. Some advanced WooCommerce layouts may need custom CSS or a developer’s help, but standard store functionality works without additional plugins or workarounds.

Brooklyn developer rates through Codeable typically range from $70 to $120 per hour depending on the scope and developer experience. Fixed-price projects for defined tasks like demo setup, a custom section, or a specific fix are also common. Post your project for a free estimate to get accurate pricing for your specific requirements.

Brooklyn is WPML compatible. You can build multilingual sites using WPML with Brooklyn without major conflicts. The theme’s content blocks translate through WPML’s string translation interface. Some layout settings in Theme Options may need to be duplicated manually for each language, but the core structure supports multilingual setups without custom code.

Start by compressing images and enabling a caching plugin. Defer non-critical JavaScript, limit the number of Revolution Slider animations, and remove unused Google Fonts weights. Use a CDN for static assets. Brooklyn’s page builder output is div-heavy, so reducing DOM size on key pages helps measurably. A performance audit can identify exactly which assets are causing the most delay.

UnitedThemes has maintained Brooklyn with updates since its launch. Updates cover compatibility with new WordPress versions, WooCommerce, and PHP. The update cadence is not as fast as some larger theme shops, but critical compatibility issues are generally addressed. Always test updates on a staging site before applying them to production.

You can migrate an existing site to Brooklyn, but it requires rebuilding page layouts in Brooklyn’s builder unless your current content is in standard WordPress blocks. The migration process involves transferring posts, media, and settings, then reconstructing designed pages. For a full site migration, see the WordPress migration service to understand what’s involved before starting.

Brooklyn’s demo importer gives you the option to import only the demo content or also overwrite settings. To avoid touching existing content, choose a selective import and only bring in the pages or sections you want to reference as templates. Clone the demo pages manually into your site rather than running a full import, which resets widgets, menus, and theme options to the demo defaults.