ExS – Business Agency and Blogging WordPress Theme

The 100 on PageSpeed belongs to the empty theme

ExS is sold on a concrete, checkable figure: around 80 kB of CSS and around 5 kB of JavaScript out of the box, designed to score 100 on PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse. It is a genuinely good figure, which is why it is worth saying exactly what it means.

It means the floor is excellent. It does not mean your site will run at 100, because that number is measured with the theme freshly installed and nothing on top. In the first week come the Google fonts, the forms plugin, the chat, the tracking pixel, the gallery and the uncompressed images. And the figure drops.

Buying the lightest theme and then loading six heavy plugins onto it is like buying an efficient car and always driving it with a full boot. The advantage is still there, but it stops showing.

What it includes

• Around 80 kB of CSS and 5 kB of JavaScript by default, a fraction of what a typical multipurpose theme weighs.
• Designed for 100 on PageSpeed Insights and Google Lighthouse, according to the vendor.
• Broad customisation capabilities despite that size, which is the product's central argument.
• Aimed at agencies and blogs, two uses where speed turns into money by different routes.
• Version 2.0.3, so with a track record behind it, unlike other freshly published themes.

How that 100 is kept, which is the real work

Host the fonts on your own server. Every typeface pulled from an external domain is a new connection before any text can be painted. Downloading them and serving them from your own domain is half an hour of work and recovers a good share of what gets lost.

Count plugins before installing them. The useful question is not whether the plugin is good, it is whether it loads its files on every page or only where needed. A forms plugin that puts its JavaScript on the front page, where there is no form, costs more than it gives.

Measure after each change, not at the end. If you measure once a month, when the number drops you will have fifteen changes to search through. If you measure as you add each thing, you know which one it was.

And separate what is seen from what is not. What falls in the first screen has to load now; the rest can wait. That distinction moves the needle most and is applied least.

What this approach suits best

A light theme pays off in two specific scenarios. On a blog with advertising or affiliate income, because every tenth of a second of waiting turns into people leaving before seeing the ad, and because ad scripts are already heavy: starting from a low floor offsets what they add.

And at an agency, because your site is your work sample. A studio that advertises building fast sites and has a slow one loses the argument before the first meeting.

Where it pays off least is on a large shop or a site with heavy functionality: there the weight comes from what the site does, not from the theme, and saving 80 kB gets diluted.

What it does not do

It does not optimise what you add. The theme is light; the plugins you put on it will not be light for being inside it. There is no caching, no image compression and no file combining included.

It is also not a shop theme: for selling at volume there are options built around WooCommerce that bring far more solved.

And lightness has a cost worth accepting: an 80 kB theme does not bring thirty demos or fifty prebuilt blocks. If you want to build in an afternoon by importing a complete demonstration, this approach works against you.

Requirements and getting started

An up to date WordPress and little else, which is part of the idea. 1. Install the theme and measure before touching anything: that is your real starting point. 2. Add one thing at a time and measure again. 3. Host the fonts locally before writing the first page. 4. Leave caching and image compression for last, once you know what weighs.

Alternatives in the catalogue

If yours is an agency with the portfolio up front, Agencium is built around showing work. And if the weight of the project sits on the editorial side, Fabula is a magazine theme with the structure already thought through.

For what the theme leaves in your hands: WP Rocket handles caching and WP Smush Pro keeps images from becoming the new bottleneck.

Frequently asked questions

Will I get 100 on PageSpeed with my site?
With the theme freshly installed, very likely. With your plugins and images on top, that is up to you.

How much does it weigh exactly?
Around 80 kB of CSS and 5 kB of JavaScript out of the box, according to the vendor.

Does it work for a shop?
Not its ground. For selling at volume there are themes built around WooCommerce.

Does it include caching or image compression?
No. Those are separate pieces and are still needed.

Does it come with many demos to import?
No, and that is consistent with the idea: complete demos are part of what makes a theme heavy.

What do I actually gain from a light theme?
A low floor. Everything you add will start from there instead of starting from double.