Show Environment in Admin Bar

If you’re like me, you often have multiple versions of the same WordPress site open in different browser windows, e.g., production in one window and development in another window.

And if you’re like me, you have also unwittingly edited content in the production environment thinking you were doing so in the development environment or vice versa.

If so, then this plugin is for you!

It adds an indication of the current environment to the Admin Bar that is easier to see than examining the URL in your browser’s address bar.

Out-of-the-box behavior

Out-of-the-box, 2 different environments are recognized:

• Production
  • The node added to the Admin Bar has a red background (i.e., Stop/be careful with any changes you make).
  • If neither a staging, QA, nor development environment is detected, then Prod is displayed in the Admin Bar.
• Development
  • The node added to the Admin Bar has a green background (i.e., Go ahead, it is safe to make changes).
  • If WP is running on localhost (either a loopback IP address or LAN IP address), then Local displays in the Admin Bar.
  • If WP_DEBUG is defined & true, then Dev displays in the Admin Bar.

Customizing the out-of-the-box behavior

Two additional environments are supported, but cannot be automatically detected:

• Staging
  • The node added to the Admin Bar has a yellow-ish background (i.e., Slow down, changes might make it into the production site).
  • For information on how to enable this environment, see the documentation.
• QA
  • The node added to the Admin Bar has a blue background (i.e., “It’s cool”, changes you make won’t affect the production site).
  • For information on how to enable this environment, see the documentation.