The Gazette — Free General News Website Template
The Gazette is a free Bootstrap 5 general news website template built like a real broadsheet front page rather than a blog grid — a centered nameplate, live headline ticker, a three-column lead, and four editorial desks for World, Business, Technology, and Culture. Its cool ink-on-paper palette with a single press-red accent gives it a serious daily-newspaper identity, and it ships fully self-hosted and dependency-free: no jQuery, no icon fonts, no CDN scripts.
Key features
- Centered broadsheet masthead with dateline, weather, and markets read-out
- Animated live headline ticker that pauses on hover
- Three-column front page with a "World in Brief" rail and dominant lead
- Four category desks: World, Business, Technology, and Culture
- Sticky sidebar with numbered "Most Read" list and live-markets widget
- Dark "Opinion & Ideas" band with lead editorial and columnist cards
- Full article page: reading-progress bar, drop cap, pull-quote, author box
- Inline-SVG icons, off-canvas mobile nav, and slide-down archive search
- Validated newsletter form; reduced-motion friendly throughout
Best for
- General news portals and daily-newspaper sites
- Online magazines covering world, business, and culture
- Publishers who want a broadsheet look over a blog grid
- Editorial teams needing a ready-made article page
- CSP-strict deployments with no CDN or icon fonts
At a glance
- Framework: Bootstrap 5
- License: Free for personal and commercial use
- Pages: 2 (front page + news article)
- Responsive: Yes
- Style: Broadsheet-modern — cool ink on crisp paper with a single press-red accent
How to use it
Download the ZIP, unzip it, and open index.html — no build step, nothing to install. Edit the text and images, point any forms at your backend or a form service, and deploy the folder to any static host. Colours and fonts live in css/style.css; the interactions are in js/main.js.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Gazette really free for commercial use?
Yes. You can use it for a personal project, paid client work, or a commercial publication at no cost. Attribution is appreciated but not required, and there are no licensing tiers or usage caps to worry about.
Do I need a build tool or framework to edit it?
No. It is plain HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript with no build step, package install, or compilation. Open the files in any code editor, change the text and links, and refresh the browser to see your edits.
How do I change the colours and fonts?
Both live in a single CSS variable block near the top of the stylesheet. Edit the custom properties to recolour the press-red accent or the ink-on-paper palette, and swap the three typefaces in the same place. By default it uses Newsreader for the nameplate and headlines, Archivo for body and interface text, and IBM Plex Mono for datelines and the ticker.
Is it responsive and mobile-friendly?
Yes. The layout is fully responsive and reflows from the multi-column broadsheet front page down to a single column on phones. On smaller screens the navigation collapses into an off-canvas mobile menu so the header stays usable.
Do the newsletter and search forms actually send data?
The template is a static front end, so the forms include working client-side validation but do not submit anywhere on their own. To make them live, point the newsletter form at your email service and wire the archive search to your own endpoint. There is no backend or payment processing included.
Can I connect it to WordPress or another CMS?
Yes, the markup is clean and semantic, so it ports well into a CMS theme or static-site generator. You would map the nameplate, desks, and article layout to your platform's template files and feed them real post data. The download itself ships as ready-to-edit static pages, not a pre-built CMS theme.
Which browsers does it support?
It works in all current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Because interactivity is guard-claused vanilla JavaScript and icons are inline SVG, it also deploys cleanly under a strict Content-Security-Policy with no external scripts or icon fonts to whitelist.
Is the live ticker and markets widget showing real data?
No — the animated headline ticker and the up/down markets widget are presentation only, populated with placeholder content in the markup. The ticker pauses on hover and freezes for reduced-motion users. Replace the sample headlines and figures with your own, or feed them from a data source if you want them to update.
