Grant Barnard

<p>EnvBeacon is a lightweight WordPress plugin designed for development teams managing multiple WordPress environments (local, staging, production). It displays a color-coded notice bar in the WordPress admin bar, making it instantly clear which environment you’re working on.</p>
<p><strong>Perfect for preventing:</strong><br />
– Accidentally modifying content on live sites<br />
– Publishing changes to staging instead of live<br />
– Confusion when switching between environments</p>
<h3>Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>🎨 Color-coded environment indicators (Red for Live, Blue for Staging, Green for Local)</li>
<li>⚙️ Easy-to-use settings page for URL pattern configuration</li>
<li>🔄 Automatic environment detection based on site URL</li>
<li>📋 Flexible URL patterns (simple strings, wildcards, regex alternation)</li>
<li>🏠 Built-in defaults for local, staging, and live environments</li>
<li>💾 Lightweight – no database overhead</li>
<li>🚀 Universal – works with any WordPress site</li>
</ul>
<h3>Quick Start</h3>
<p><strong>To set up the plugin:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>In WordPress admin, go to Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> EnvBeacon</li>
<li>Enter your Live environment URL (e.g., <code>example.com</code>)</li>
<li>Staging patterns come pre-filled with common defaults: <code>stg|staging|stage|qa|dev-staging</code></li>
<li>Local patterns come pre-filled with common defaults: <code>localhost|127.0.0.1|.local|.test</code></li>
<li>Customize patterns and colors as needed</li>
<li>Click Save Changes</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Default Patterns:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Staging</strong>: <code>stg|staging|stage|qa|dev-staging</code></li>
<li><strong>Local</strong>: <code>localhost|127.0.0.1|.local|.test</code></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Custom Pattern Examples:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><code>example.com</code> – Simple string match</li>
<li><code>*.example.com</code> – Wildcard (matches staging.example.com, qa.example.com, etc.)</li>
<li><code>staging|stage|qa</code> – Regex alternation (matches any of these words)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Usage</h3>
<p>Once activated and configured, the EnvBeacon will:</p>
<ol>
<li>Check your site’s URL on each page load</li>
<li>Match it against your configured patterns</li>
<li>Display a colored indicator in the WordPress admin bar</li>
<li>Show the environment name (Live, Staging, or Local)</li>
</ol>
<p>No further configuration needed!</p>
<h3>Support</h3>
<p>For support, questions, or feature requests, please visit the plugin support forum or check the documentation in the settings page.</p>
<p>The plugin includes detailed URL pattern syntax help in the settings page to guide you through configuration.</p>
<h3>License</h3>
<p>This plugin is licensed under the GPL v2 or later.</p>
<h3>Credits</h3>
<p>Built for development teams who need clear environment indication.</p>


EnvBeacon

Display a colored notice in the WordPress admin bar to indicate which environment (Live, Staging, Local) your site is running on.

Ivaylo Draganov

<p>Adds a menu to the admin bar to quickly identify different environments for a site (e.g. production and development) and easily switch to the same URL on other environments. Multi-site compatible for both sub-domain and sub-directory installations.</p>
<h3>Configuration</h3>
<p>The plugin has a convenient settings page but can also be configured programatically via a filter hook.</p>
<h4>Setting environments via the WordPress admin interface</h4>
<p>Navigate to “Settings > Set the Stage” in the WordPress admin to review and edit the configuration.</p>
<h4>Setting environments via a WordPress filter hook</h4>
<p>Hook to <code>drgnff_wp_stage_switcher__environments</code> and return an array with environments. Here’s an example filter function:</p>
<pre><code>add_filter( 'drgnff_wp_stage_switcher__environments', function ($envs) {
    return [
        [
            'url' => 'https://example.com', // home url
            'title' => 'LIVE', // display name
            'color' => '#ffffff', // hex color (optional)
            'background_color' => '#ff0000', // hex color (optional)
        ],
        [
            'url' => 'https://example.com',
            'title' => 'DEVELOPMENT',
            'color' => '#ffffff',
            'background_color' => '#228b22',
        ],
    ];
});
</code></pre>
<h4>Controlling visibility of the switcher</h4>
<p>By default the switcher menu is displayed to all logged in users. By hooking to <code>drgnff_wp_stage_switcher__should_display_switcher</code> and returning a boolean you can control whether the switcher should be displayed.</p>
<h4>Overriding the default environment</h4>
<p>The default environment is used for the current site if it’s not in the list of environments. By hooking to <code>drgnff_wp_stage_switcher__default_environment</code> you can control the title and colors for the default environment.</p>
<h4>A few notes on configuration</h4>
<ul>
<li>Filters have a precedence over manual configuration made in the settings page. If filters are used then relevant sections on the settings page are rendered as read-only.</li>
<li>For multi-site installations use the URLs of the main site.</li>
<li>The plugin initiates its logic on the <code>plugins_loaded</code> hook with priority <code>11</code>. Thus filter hooks that affect the plugin must be added before that.</li>
</ul>


Set the Stage

Quickly switch between environments (live, test, dev) from the admin bar.

EnvBeacon vs Set the Stage