Mark McNeece of 365i

Environment Indicator adds a prominent visual indicator to the WordPress admin bar showing the current site environment. This high-visibility indicator helps prevent accidental changes on production sites by making the environment instantly recognizable to logged-in users.
Perfect for developers, agencies, and teams managing multiple environments (development, staging, production) across different sites.
<h4>Key Features</h4>
Smart Environment Detection 
* Automatically detects environment using WordPress core constants (<code>WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE</code>) 
* Supports popular hosting providers: WP Engine, Pantheon, Kinsta, Flywheel 
* Legacy Bedrock constant support (<code>WP_ENV</code>) 
* Subdomain-based heuristics (dev.example.com, staging.example.com) 
* Manual override option for custom setups
Customization Options 
* Custom Colors – Match your branding or personal preferences for each environment 
* Custom Labels – Rename DEV/STAGING/LIVE to LOCAL, UAT, PRODUCTION, or anything you prefer 
* Role-Based Visibility – Control which user roles can see the indicator (great for client sites)
Visual Enhancements 
* Admin bar label (always visible) 
* Full admin bar background coloring (high-visibility option) 
* Browser tab prefix – instantly identify environments across multiple tabs 
* Top border in wp-admin screens 
* Admin footer watermark 
* Dashboard widget showing environment status and system information
Export/Import 
* Export settings as JSON to deploy across multiple sites 
* Import settings from JSON file 
* Perfect for agencies managing client sites with consistent configurations
Multisite Compatible 
* Full support for WordPress multisite installations 
* Network-wide settings when network-activated 
* Per-site settings when activated on individual sites
<h4>How It Works</h4>
Detection runs in this order:
<ol>
<li>WordPress core constant: <code>WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE</code></li>
<li>Legacy constant: <code>WP_ENV</code></li>
<li>Hosting provider constants (WP Engine, Pantheon, Kinsta, Flywheel)</li>
<li>Subdomain patterns (dev, staging, test, qa)</li>
<li>Default to LIVE if no detection</li>
</ol>
You can always override automatic detection and manually select the environment.
<h4>Perfect For</h4>
<ul>
<li>Developers – Never accidentally deploy to the wrong environment</li>
<li>Agencies – Manage multiple client sites with consistent environment indicators</li>
<li>Teams – Everyone instantly knows which environment they’re working in</li>
<li>Managed Hosting – Works out-of-the-box with WP Engine, Pantheon, Kinsta, and Flywheel</li>
</ul>
<h4>Zero Impact on Visitors</h4>
The indicator only displays for logged-in users. Public visitors see no performance impact or visual changes.
<h3>Development</h3>
Development of this plugin happens on GitHub: https://github.com/BSolveIT/environment-indicator
Bug reports and feature requests are welcome!

365i Environment Indicator

Displays a color-coded DEV, STAGING, or LIVE indicator in the admin bar to prevent accidental changes on production sites.

Mark Jaquith

mrwweb

Roy Tanck

tekapo

Stoil Dobreff

tflight

WordPress 5.5 introduced a way to differentiate between environment types (development, staging, production). This plugin shows your site’s environment type in the admin bar and the dashboard “At a Glance” widget.
<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/07/24/new-wp_get_environment_type-function-in-wordpress-5-5/" rel="nofollow ugc">More info about the feature</a>
To gain additional control — for example, setting the environment or other values from the WP admin (when <code>wp-config.php</code> is writable) — consider installing our other plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/0-day-analytics/" rel="ugc">0 Day Analytics</a>.
<h3>Recommended Plugins</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/0-day-analytics/" rel="ugc">0 Day Analytics</a> — a powerful plugin for sites that need more insight into errors and runtime behavior. It includes a Cron manager, a Transient manager (database-backed), DB manager, Snippet manager, Mail manager, Plugin Version Switcher available from the Plugins page and many more.</li>
</ul>

Display Environment Type

Have you ever accidentally added test content to a productive website?

You can now define a constant in your wp-config.php to distinguish between development, staging and productuion sites. To make this visible, this lean but helpful plugin adds an indicator to the admin bar and dashboard widget which helps to avoid mistakes as adding "Lorem ipsum" to your productive site. :)

Plugin works like a charm. No settings needed. Install, activate and feel happy.

Nice little helper


Five stars for Display Environment Type! 



Huge thanks to the author for creating this gem. The plugin might be small, but it's incredibly useful, doing exactly what you'd expect without any unnecessary clutter. No settings hassle – just install and get to work seamlessly.


This is what a developer needs

Displays WordPress 5.5's environment type setting in the admin bar and the "At a Glance" dashboard widget.

365i Environment Indicator vs Display Environment Type