How do you set up a finance and business news site on WordPress?

Last updated: October 30, 2026

In short: For a business news site, pick a theme with a timed latest-news strip, an analysis column next to the lead story and separate sections for markets, companies and personal finance, then add live rates and stock data with a separate plugin. Wiozen Theme's Finance design opens as a business paper: a timed "Latest updates" strip at the top, and on the front page a lead story, a "Just in" list and three posts from the Analysis category. The theme doesn't fetch market data; price tables and exchange rates need a plugin.

What makes a finance news site different from a general news site?

Business readers come back several times a day, and the first thing they check is the time: when was the rate decision announced, is the market close out yet. So headlines need their publish time next to them, markets, companies and personal finance need their own places on the front page, and opinion has to sit apart from news.

Finance content shapes decisions about people's money. Search engines look harder at who wrote such pages and when they were last updated. Filling in author pages and showing dates on every story is as much part of the job as the design.

How is the front page laid out in Wiozen Theme's Finance design?

Finance is one of Wiozen Theme's five ready designs. Its default front page comes in this order:

1. A three-column opener: a large lead story with two stories under it in the middle, a time-stamped "Just in" list on the left, and on the right "Most read" (5 posts) plus 3 posts from the Analysis category. This module uses the latest 11 posts.
2. A 728 × 90 ad slot on desktop and a separate ad slot on phones.
3. Three columns for Markets, Companies and Personal Finance, 4 posts each.
4. A 4-column grid from the Economy category with a "View all" link.
5. A 300 × 250 ad slot.
6. "Latest news": a list of 8 posts with small images.

Despite the name, "Most read" is sorted by comment count, not by views; on a tie the newer post wins. The theme has no page view counter. On a site with comments turned off the list effectively shows the newest posts, and you can swap the module on the Customize tab.

The timed headline strip and how dates show

The "Latest updates" strip under the menu rotates the 6 newest posts with time, category and headline. The "Just in" list follows the same rule: a post published today shows the time (14:05), an older one a short date (28 Oct). That way a leftover "08:00" from yesterday doesn't read as today's news.

Turn the strip off with the "Breaking news strip" switch on the Settings tab. The same card has switches for the date and social links in the top bar.

Which slugs should your categories have?

The Finance front page looks up categories by slug: markets, companies, personal-finance, economy and analysis. The demo content creates these five as Markets, Companies, Personal Finance, Economy and Analysis.

If you create categories yourself, you have two options. Keep these slugs and name the categories however you like, and the columns fill on their own. Or use different slugs, in which case the columns fill with your categories that have the most posts and you pick the right category for each column on the Customize tab. The analysis column has no such fallback: without a category with the analysis slug, the analysis part next to the lead story doesn't show.

Setup steps

1. Have WordPress 6.6 and PHP 7.4 or newer. Under Settings › Permalinks choose "Post name".
2. Download Wiozen Theme, install it under Appearance › Themes › Add New › Upload Theme and activate it.
3. Under Appearance › Wiozen Theme, click "Connect Wiozen" and approve the site with your account. The panel needs at least $5 in total top-ups on the account; the balance stays yours.
4. Choose Finance on the Designs tab.
5. To see the layout filled in, add the demo from the Demo content tab.

The demo adds 30 posts across 5 categories (8 of them in Markets) plus About and Contact pages. If the site language is Turkish the posts come in Turkish, otherwise in English. Of the 30 photos, 29 are CC0 and one carries the Public Domain Mark; sources are in the theme's designs/finance/demo/CREDITS.txt file. The demo stories are not real market data, so remove them with one button on the same tab before you launch.

Does the theme show live exchange rates and stock prices?

No. The Finance design gives you a layout and typography; it doesn't pull exchange rates, gold prices or stock tables. For those, install a plugin that connects to a data provider and place its block in the header or sidebar in the Site Editor. Saying on the page whether the data is delayed or live, and where it comes from, helps readers trust it.

To color rising and falling figures inside a story, the design's palette has a green (#0a7a42) and a red (#b42318). You'll find both when picking a text color in a paragraph or table block; in dark mode they switch to lighter shades.

Readability: fonts, colors and dark mode

Headings are set in Source Serif 4 and body text in Libre Franklin. Both fonts ship inside the theme and load from your own server. Categories get colors automatically from the design's palette of eight.

The dark mode button is already in all three Finance header layouts. If a reader picks the dark background, the choice is saved in their own browser. For someone following markets late at night it's a small setting they use often; the details are in the dark mode guide.

Frequently asked questions

For your business news site, download Wiozen Theme for free and try the Finance design with the demo content on your own site.