EnvBeacon

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.

Perfect for preventing:
– Accidentally modifying content on live sites
– Publishing changes to staging instead of live
– Confusion when switching between environments

Features

• 🎨 Color-coded environment indicators (Red for Live, Blue for Staging, Green for Local)
• ⚙️ Easy-to-use settings page for URL pattern configuration
• 🔄 Automatic environment detection based on site URL
• 📋 Flexible URL patterns (simple strings, wildcards, regex alternation)
• 🏠 Built-in defaults for local, staging, and live environments
• 💾 Lightweight – no database overhead
• 🚀 Universal – works with any WordPress site

Quick Start

To set up the plugin:

1. In WordPress admin, go to Settings → EnvBeacon
2. Enter your Live environment URL (e.g., example.com)
3. Staging patterns come pre-filled with common defaults: stg|staging|stage|qa|dev-staging
4. Local patterns come pre-filled with common defaults: localhost|127.0.0.1|.local|.test
5. Customize patterns and colors as needed
6. Click Save Changes

Default Patterns:

• Staging: stg|staging|stage|qa|dev-staging
• Local: localhost|127.0.0.1|.local|.test

Custom Pattern Examples:

• example.com – Simple string match
• *.example.com – Wildcard (matches staging.example.com, qa.example.com, etc.)
• staging|stage|qa – Regex alternation (matches any of these words)

Usage

Once activated and configured, the EnvBeacon will:

1. Check your site’s URL on each page load
2. Match it against your configured patterns
3. Display a colored indicator in the WordPress admin bar
4. Show the environment name (Live, Staging, or Local)

No further configuration needed!

Support

For support, questions, or feature requests, please visit the plugin support forum or check the documentation in the settings page.

The plugin includes detailed URL pattern syntax help in the settings page to guide you through configuration.

License

This plugin is licensed under the GPL v2 or later.

Credits

Built for development teams who need clear environment indication.