My web site was built on the Newspaper theme when I first joined Ezoic. After the version 11 update, my core web vitals improved tremendously to nearly perfect scores. I was getting zero in CLS or close to it on every page, along with very fast LCP and FID. I was getting 100 page speed scores on desktop and around 90 on mobile. This was with posts that range from around 1,000 words to as high as 4,000 words and have quite a few images.
I was on a different host at the time, one who had their own CDN system. I turned that off and had the host's tech support turn off server-side caching as well due to it conflicting with Ezoic's CDN/cache.
I was running WP Rocket caching with a few other features turned on in the plugin. At the time, Leap was not available to me, so I just used the set up I just described. I never used the speed accelerator that pre-dated Leap. I remember having to turn off mobile caching in WP Rocket because it was causing weird header layout issues with Ezoic.
Any theme can be slow if it is not set up properly or if it has a ton of unnecessary plugins running. I took my site off of Newspaper, but not because Leap labels it as a slow theme. After the version 11 theme update, Newspaper was not at all slow for me. I changed to a different theme primarily because with the Newspaper theme, the site just seemed too congested when ads were inserted and because the theme's creators didn't seem interested in trying to adjust how it worked with certain plugins. For example, at the time, RankMath and Newspaper weren't a good match when it came to optimizing any pages that were built with the TagDiv builder. (Post optimization did work,)
At the same time as I changed themes, I changed hosts to one I've used with other sites for more than 15 years, mostly because I have better control over PHP settings there than at the previous host.
I currently use Leap with the theme that replaced Newspaper. But honestly, if I were still using the Newspaper theme, and knowing how fast my pages were loading and how well my core web vitals were doing, I'm not sure I would be running it through Leap now.
I'm not at all suggesting you not use Leap with the Newspaper theme. I changed themes before Leap was made available to me. It's just that Leap is not required, and I see no way my site (on the Newspaper theme) could have been any faster or scored better in core web vitals that it did the way I had it set up.
I hard-coded a placeholder into the header and one just above the footer. I also had two or three hard-coded into the sidebar. I would suggest not using the Newspaper theme's built-in ad placements for Ezoic ads in posts. There aren't nearly enough available spots to insert as many placeholders as you should have. Just use one of the available Ezoic tools to insert placeholders in your posts. You can also put placeholders in the header and footer that way if you'd rather not hard-code them in those locations.
Some other suggestions:
- Use as few plugins as possible with Newspaper. Even with the speed increases after the version 11 update, too many plugins, or even certain types of plugins, could slow it down.
- Optimize your images as well as possible.
- If you're going to use Google fonts, use as few variations as possible.
- If you're using embed forms such as newsletter subscription forms from MailerLite, Mailchimp, etc., try using the HTML code version to insert them instead of the Javascript code version. (For speed and also because Newspaper sometimes doesn't play well with outside Javascript.)
- If you want to have social media icons/buttons on your posts, use Newspaper's built-in one, not an outside plugin.
Your mileage may vary. Your experience may be much different than mine. I'm just relating my personal experience using the Newspaper theme with Ezoic. I hope it helps.