Private Message Icon invisible on profile header

Hi, I have activated private messaging but the envelope icon on the profile header is invisible. It is there next to the connections icon as I can click on it and it works. It becomes visible when the member receives a message but otherwise remains invisible. This is the case while using the default CB template as well as any custom template. Is there a way to make to the envelope icon visible so that the user knows it exists, even if there are no messages?

Thanks for any advice!

Using Joomla 3.9.5 and latest CB.

Seams to be working fine in my tests. It's a fontawesome envelope icon and it has no CSS to hide it self. What layout are you using in your CB Login Module? Does it still do this with default Joomla protostar template? Is caching enabled and does it still do this after clearing cache? Do you have JCH Optimizer installed and if so does it still do this after disabling it?

Dear Kyle,

Thank you for your quick and useful reply. Following your suggestions I tested with the protostar template and indeed the icon works fine with this template.

I am using the Warptheme Blank template based on Warp 7 Framework. However, I think there may be a clue in the fact that I started initially using the JF Sirena Joomla and CB template based on the Gantry 5 Framework in early development of the site. I uninstalled this template fully before using the WP Blank template. I am wondering if the previous Sirena installation/removal changed the icon in some way? If so is it possible to restore this in some way?

The default CB template is 2.4.2, can this be reinstalled to correct anything that was unintentionally changed during the Sirena removal?

I tried disabling the profile icon and re-enabling on the private messaging CB plugin but this merely removes/restores the invisible envelope icon

I tried clearing the cache several times etc. No change.

Any further ideas would be much appreciated.

The icon is just CSS driven as it's a font based icon. Your template is likely overriding it by whatever means. If your template loads Fontawesome 5 then that maybe a problem and will require your template to load the Fontawesom 5 shim so Fontawesom 4 icon classes still work.

Thank you Kyle,

That certainly sounds like the problem. I am asking the template provider how I can load the FA shim. I'll report back here with the outcome, once I have implemented that.

Meanwhile, are there any plans to update CB with FA v5 in future releases?

Regards
George

Meanwhile, are there any plans to update CB with FA v5 in future releases?

Eventually yes, but Fontawesome v5 decided backwards compatibility was not a good idea and are forcing a JS shim to be backwards compatible. We don't like to load unnecessary JS. So when/if we update to v5 we've to change all of our CSS classes throughout CB for icons (which is significant). It's a massive undertaking which provides little to no benefit at this time. It's a problem they didn't need to create and am honestly completely disappointed with and put off by the direction Fontawesome is taking. It's possible when we consider the upgrade we may upgrade to something else entirely.