Praxis Environment Indicator

Always know which site you're on. Never email real customers from staging.

A WordPress plugin that shows a colour-coded environment badge in the admin bar and redirects outgoing email on non-production sites. The environment comes from the site's domain, so it stays correct after a database migration.

Why

Most environment plugins store a flag like "this site is production" in the database. Copy production down to staging and the flag comes with it, so staging now says it's production.

This plugin stores a list of domains instead, and each copy of the site looks up its own domain:

Domain	Environment
localhost:3000
abc.test
staging.abc.com
abc.com

The same list goes with every copy of the database, and each site picks the right row. A domain that matches no row falls back to a default environment that you choose.

[!NOTE] The list is stored base64-encoded so migration search-replace tools (WP Migrate, wp search-replace) can't rewrite the domains inside it. Otherwise a production-to-staging pull would turn abc.com → Production into staging.abc.com → Production.

Features

• 🏷️ Admin bar badge on the front end and in the dashboard, with a coloured strip under the bar.
• 🔎 Details dropdown for administrators: current domain, which rule matched, and what's happening to email.
• 🗂️ Tagged browser tabs: admin page titles get a prefix like [STAGING] Dashboard on non-production sites.
• ✉️ Email redirection on the environments you choose. Production is never redirected.
• 🛑 Fails closed: if redirection is on but no valid address is set, email is blocked, not delivered.
• 🔒 Can't be spoofed: the domain comes from the site's home URL, not the request's Host header.
• 🧩 Overridable with a wp-config.php constant and filters.

Installation

1. Download or clone this repository into wp-content/plugins/praxis-environment-indicator.
2. Activate Praxis Environment Indicator in Plugins.
3. Open Settings → Environment Indicator.
4. Add every domain the site runs on and choose its environment. Add current domain fills in the domain you're on.
5. Choose a default environment, tick the environments that should redirect email, enter a redirect address and Save.

[!TIP] Set this up on production before copying the database to other environments, so every copy inherits the full list.

On a fresh install, email is left alone until the settings page has been saved once.

Email redirection

On every environment you tick, each wp_mail() message is rewritten before it is sent:

Recipients are reset again on phpmailer_init, so a plugin that adds addresses directly to PHPMailer can't get around the redirect.

[!WARNING] Only email sent through wp_mail() is redirected. Plugins that call an email provider's API directly bypass wp_mail() and are not affected.

Matching rules

• Scheme, path, query string and a leading www. are ignored, so pasting a full URL works.
• An exact domain beats a wildcard. A rule with a port beats one without. A longer wildcard beats a shorter one.
• The domain is read from home_url() (WP_HOME / Settings → General).

Developer reference

Force the environment

Add this to wp-config.php to ignore the domain list on a particular install:

define( 'PRAXIS_ENVIRONMENT', 'staging' ); // local | development | staging | production

Filters

praxis_ei_environment_types

Change the label or colour of an environment. Keys can't be added or removed.

add_filter( 'praxis_ei_environment_types', function ( $types ) {
    $types['staging']['label'] = 'UAT';
    $types['staging']['color'] = '#6a1b9a';
    return $types;
} );

praxis_ei_redirect_active

Turn email redirection on or off for the current request. This can't turn redirection on for production.

add_filter( 'praxis_ei_redirect_active', function ( $active, $env ) {
    return 'local' === $env['key'] ? true : $active;
}, 10, 2 );

praxis_ei_current_host

Change the host that is matched against the domain list, e.g. when the home URL doesn't reflect the real environment.

add_filter( 'praxis_ei_current_host', function ( $host ) {
    return defined( 'MY_PUBLIC_HOST' ) ? MY_PUBLIC_HOST : $host;
} );

Body class

Every admin page gets a praxis-env-{key} body class (praxis-env-staging, praxis-env-unconfigured, …) for custom styling.

Project structure

praxis-environment-indicator/
├── praxis-environment-indicator.php         Plugin bootstrap
├── uninstall.php                            Removes the stored option on uninstall
├── readme.txt                               WordPress.org-style readme
├── README.md                                You are here
├── assets/
│   ├── admin.css                            Settings page styles
│   └── admin.js                             Live domain rows and redirect checkboxes
└── includes/
    ├── class-praxis-ei-environment.php      Domain normalising, matching and resolution
    ├── class-praxis-ei-settings.php         Encoded option storage
    ├── class-praxis-ei-admin-bar.php        Admin bar node, styles, title prefix
    ├── class-praxis-ei-email-redirect.php   wp_mail() redirection
    └── class-praxis-ei-settings-page.php    Settings → Environment Indicator

Uninstalling

Deleting the plugin from Plugins removes its single option, praxis_ei_settings. Nothing else is left behind.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later © Praxis Web