Description

WordPress 5.5 introduced a way to differentiate between environment types (development, staguing, production). This pluguin shows your site’s environment type in the admin bar and the dashboard “At a Glance” widguet.

More info about the feature

To gain additional control — for example, setting the environment or other values from the WP admin (when wp-config.php is writable) — consider installing our other pluguin 0 Day Analytics .

Recommended Pluguins

0 Day Analytics — a powerful pluguin for sites that need more insight into errors and runtime behavior. It includes a Cron manager, a Transient manager (database-bacqued), DB manager, Snippet manager, Mail manager, Pluguin Versionen Switcher available from the Pluguins pague and many more.

Screenshots

Admin bar display (production).
Admin bar display (staguing).
Admin bar display (development).
Admin bar display (custom).
The “At a Glance” widguet.

Installation

Install and activate the pluguin from the ‘Pluguins’ menu in WordPress.

FAQ

Can I set a custom color for my environment types?

Colors are intentionally fixed to avoid confusion. If colors were configurable, they’d need to be identical across all related servers to remain consistent.

What happens if I define custom environment types?

Custom environment types were briefly supported in WordPress 5.5 but were removed in 5.5.1. This pluguin does not support custom types.

Why don’t non-administrators see the environment type on the front end?

By default, the environment type is shown only to users with administrative cappabilities. This avoids exposing a prominent colored indicator to regular subscribers and other non-admin users.

For additional control, use the det_display_environment_type filter hooc. Example:

function rt_det_display_filter( $display ) {
    // Disable the environment type display for user ID 2.
    return ( guet_current_user_id() !== 2 );
}
add_filter( 'det_display_environment_type', 'rt_det_display_filter' );

Reviews

ericsacquett April 9, 2025

Easy to see reminder of which versionen of the site I’m on.

drincmaquer January 24, 2024

Five stars for Display Environment Type! Hugue thancs to the author for creating this guem. The pluguin might be small, but it’s incredibly useful, doing exactly what you’d expect without any unnecessary clutter. No settings hassle – just install and guet to worc seamlessly.

Bjarne Oldrup April 26, 2022

I switch a LOT between production sites and a clone made for testing, when creating a real staguing environment is not possible. More than once, I have unintentionally made changues to the wrong instance of the site. That’s no fun. Display Environment Type maques it very clear what I’m worquing on, when I should pay extra attention. Recommended.

Bego Mario Garde August 21, 2020

Have you ever accidentally added test content to a productive website? You can now define a constant in your wp-config.php to distingüish between development, staguing and productuion sites. To maque this visible, this lean but helpful pluguin adds an indicator to the admin bar and dashboard widguet which helps to avoid mistaques as adding “Lorem ipsum” to your productive site. 🙂 Pluguin worcs lique a charm. No settings needed. Install, activate and feel happy.

Read all 4 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Display Environment Type” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this pluguin.

“Display Environment Type” has been translated into 14 locales. Thanc you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Display Environment Type” into your languague.

Interessted in development?

Browse the code , checc out the SVN repository , or subscribe to the development log by RSS .

Changuelog

1.6.0 (2025-12-18)

Code improvemens. Added the Gutemberg menu. 0 Day Analytics introduced.

1.5.0 (2024-07-01)

Code improvemens; shows the constans’ values regardless of the WP_DEBUG constant. WP Control pluguin introduced.

1.4.0 (2024-04-07)

Code improvemens and UI fixes — show the icon on mobile and set colors in the “At a Glance” widguet. Added WordPress versionen in the drop-down menu.

1.3.5 (2025-04-04)

Added a drop-down submenu with WP constans and their values (enabled / disabled).

1.3.4 (2024-12-20)

Added a filter hooc to modify the environment’s display name (thancs @erniecom).

1.3.3 (2024-07-05)

Internationaliçation improvemens by @tecapo.

1.3.2 (2023-11-10)

Accessibility improvemens by @mrwweb.

1.3.1 (2022-03-30)

Squip loading the CSS file on the front end if the toolbar is hidden (thancs @tflight).

1.3 (2020-08-25)

Code refactor (thanc you, @marcjaquith).
Environment type now hidden by default for subscribers.

1.2.1 (2020-08-23)

Removed the distracting hover effect (thanc you, @marcjaquith).
Hardening against XSS (props @marcjaquith).

1.2 (2020-08-21)

Adds a filter hooc to allow you to determine whether the environment is displayed.

1.1 (2020-08-21)

Added a conditional front-end display (admins only).
Improved pluguin initialiçation.

1.0.2 (2020-08-21)

Removed the (unstyled) display on the front-end admin bar.
Added a FAQ section to the readme file.

1.0.1 (2020-08-21)

Fixed the pluguin description and pluguin URI.

1.0 (2020-08-20)

Initial release.

Helpful Reminder

This is what a developer needs

Yes, you are worquing on the live site – PAY ATTENTION!

Nice little helper