Troubleshooting Font Awesome icons
Font Awesome 5 (FA5) is not compatible with Font Awesome 4 (FA4), and this has caused various problems with the display of Font Awesome icons within and across WordPress plugins. The main indicator of icon trouble is seeing a blank box instead of the icon itself, but there can be other problems that arise from the fact that the CSS classes have changed for FA5 icons. We can't recommend a fix that works in all cases, but here are some things you can try.
1. Try changing Beaver Builder plugin and theme settings
Both the Beaver Builder plugin and theme have changed across several versions to smoothly transition to FA5, and there are some settings that may solve the problem, but the settings are a bit different depending on which versions of the Beaver Builder plugin and theme you're using. If you're using a different theme or these Beaver Builder Theme settings don't solve the problem, there are a few other troubleshooting solutions you can try, described in Sections 2 and 3.
Beaver Builder loads only the FA5 icon set for content layouts. If you still have FA4 icons in your legacy content layouts, a shim loads to automatically convert those icons to FA5. If you have custom CSS rules for FA4 icons, you will need to update them, because the FA5 classes have different names. See Section 3 of this article.
Beaver Builder Theme relies on the Beaver Builder plugin to load the icon sets that apply to the areas of the page controlled by the theme, so the icon set is only loaded a maximum of one time for a page.
If you're using non-Beaver Builder plugins that use Font Awesome icons, such as a mega menu, there's a setting in the Beaver Builder Theme at Customize > General > Layout > Font Awesome icons that can force icons to load on every page. Changing this setting may solve the problem if you are seeing blank boxes instead of icons.
If you're using the Beaver Builder Theme, can choose how Font Awesome icons load on every page. See this article for details.
2. Possible conflicts from other plugins or themes
We've seen an issue where the way another plugin handles assigning font weight to icons has caused a problem with FA5. The free version of FA5 requires a font weight of 900. If you're seeing blank boxes and other solutions haven't worked, you could try adding this custom rule. See this article about where to add custom CSS code.
.fas { font-weight:900 !important; }
The .fas class is used for FA5 Solid icons.
If this rule doesn't work, try going through the routine of deactivating plugins or changing themes to see if your problem is resolved.
3. Other FA5 troubleshooting tips
If you added your own HTML for Font Awesome icons or developed custom CSS
rules for FA4, you will probably need to update them. The free set of FA5
Solid icons use the .fas class and require a font weight of 900. Here's
some basic information about built-in classes in FA5 and examples of CSS rules for other modifications, and here's some basic FA5 troubleshooting information.
If you have written custom CSS that uses pseudo elements (::before or ::after) and it’s not working, see this Font Awesome article about writing rules that include pseudo-elements. Be sure to use the correct font weight for your icon set, as listed in that article.
Some ad blocker browser extensions will block certain icon fonts from loading. If you're using an ad blocker, try whitelisting the site.