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Troubleshooting SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle: Why Icons Disappear or Display Incorrectly

29 threads Sep 10, 2025 Plugin → Siteorigin widgets bundle

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Icons not showing up in your SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle features or social widgets is a common and frustrating issue for many WordPress users. Based on community reports, this problem often stems from a few key areas, including recent plugin updates, browser caching, or conflicts with other site elements. This guide will walk you through the most effective troubleshooting steps to get your icons displaying correctly again.

Why Do Icons Disappear or Display Incorrectly?

The most frequent cause of icon issues is the transition between versions of Font Awesome. The SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle team has updated the plugin to include newer icon sets. If your site is still trying to load resources from an older version (like Font Awesome 4.7) due to cached files, the icons may fail to load or display as odd characters like an ampersand (&). Other common causes include aggressive caching plugins, conflicts with other icon plugins, or missing resource files.

Common Solutions to Try

1. Clear All Caches

This is the first and most crucial step. Caching is designed to speed up your site by storing static copies of files, but it can also serve outdated code after an update.

  • Plugin Caches: If you use a caching or optimization plugin (e.g., W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket), clear its cache completely. Look for a "Clear/Purge Cache" button in your plugin's settings.
  • Browser Cache: Clear your own web browser's cache and cookies. You can usually find this option in your browser's history or settings menu.
  • Server Cache: Some hosting providers implement their own server-level caching. Contact your host's support and ask them to clear any server cache for your domain.

2. Check for Plugin Conflicts

Conflicts with other plugins, especially those that also manage icons, can break how SiteOrigin's icons are loaded.

  • Temporarily deactivate any other icon-related plugins (e.g., AGP Font Awesome Collection).
  • Check if your icons reappear. If they do, you have identified a conflict. You may need to choose one plugin or seek an alternative.

3. Verify File Integrity (False Positives)

In rare cases, security software may incorrectly flag icon font files as a threat (a false positive). If you receive a security warning about a file like so-widgets-bundle/icons/fontawesome/style.css, it is almost certainly an error. A full, fresh reinstall of the SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle plugin can resolve this by replacing all files with clean copies.

4. Investigate Console Errors

Your browser's developer tools can provide specific clues. Press F12 on your keyboard and navigate to the "Console" tab. If you see 404 (Not Found) errors for font files (e.g., .woff2, .ttf) or CSS files from the SiteOrigin bundle, it indicates the files are missing or their paths are broken. This often points to an incomplete update or a file permission issue on your server. A full plugin reinstall is also the best fix for this.

When the Issue is a Missing Feature

Some reported "issues" are actually requests for functionality that is not yet built into the widgets. For example:

  • Icon Position: The button widget currently only supports placing an icon before the text, not after.
  • Custom Icon Packs: Adding entire new icon packs (like Material Design or Icomoon) is not natively supported due to licensing or technical constraints.

In these cases, custom CSS code is often the recommended community workaround until such features are potentially added in a future update.

Conclusion

Icon display problems are typically resolvable by systematically working through the steps above, starting with a full cache clearance. If issues persist after trying these solutions, the problem may be more specific to your site's configuration. In such cases, providing a link to a public page where the error occurs is the best way for the community to offer more targeted advice.

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