Pantheon Changelog

Feature and Product Release Updates

Object Cache Pro

WordPress sites can now leverage an upgraded object caching solution on Pantheon! Object Cache Pro is a highly optimized premium WordPress plugin that integrates with Redis for business class performance. Find out more about our perspective Object Caching from Steve Persch, Director of Developer Experience.

See Pantheon’s documentation for instructions on how to enable Object Cache Pro. Or join the #WordPress Slack Channel to connect with other customers using Object Cache Pro.

Front-End Sites Enhancements

We released version 1.0.5 of the WP Decoupled Preview plugin which contains a bug fix specific to WordPress 6.3. WP Decoupled Preview enables content editors to see their changes in the context of a front-end framework (served through Pantheon's Front-End Sites) like Next.js. To try this functionality, request access to Front-End Sites and follow our tutorial for spinning up our WordPress + Next.js starter.

Can you tell we want more teams to sign up for Front-End Sites? If you don't yet have access, as of the last month you'll now see callouts in the site creation flow that lead to Front-End Sites Access:

Thanks to efforts in the last month, once you spin up new codebases in Front-End Sites, you will also find:

• Newly improved readme files in your fresh projects.
• Health checks that fire early in the build process if your Front-End Site may be likely to fail due to missing variables for a back-end CMS
• A better navigation and search functionality for the Decoupled Kit project documentation.

Want to chat more about these kinds of sites? Join the #front-end-frameworks Slack Channel.

WordPress Multisite Search and Replace

WordPress Multisites can now run automated Search and Replace when cloning the database between environments or spinning up new environments.

Subdomain Multisites can use a domain map to define the URLs between environments, or auto-convert to a subdirectory Multisite in non-live environments.

For more information, see Pantheon’s documentation on Search and Replace. Or join the #WordPress Slack Channel to connect with other Pantheon customers & super-users.

Early Access: Customer Scheduled Jobs

The Terminus Scheduled Jobs Plugin allows you to schedule and automate specific cron jobs according to site requirements without affecting performance.

You can specify the desired frequency (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, hourly), and the actions to be performed. The system then executes the scheduled jobs automatically based on the provided instructions. Helps with long running jobs by granting a total budget of 300 mins (in a 24 hr period) to run jobs.

Early Access: Streamlined User Offboarding

Helps Workspace Admins more effectively manage user access by providing the ability to offboard users from multiple sites in a single click.

For more information, see Pantheon’s documentation on Workspace Offboarding. Or join the #WordPress Slack Channel to connect with other Pantheon customers & super-users.

Platform Updates

PHP Security Updates

Pantheon has deployed PHP versions 8.2.9, 8.1.22, and 8.0.30 to customer sites running on the platform. These releases address vulnerabilities disclosed in CVE-2023-3823 and CVE-2023-3824.

If you are using PHP 8.2, 8.1 or 8.0, there is nothing further that you need to do. If you are still on PHP 7.4 or earlier, though, you should schedule some time to upgrade to a supported version.While the vulnerabilities patched in these latest releases are not reported to affect PHP 7.4, the fact remains that there could be (and probably are) unpatched vulnerabilities in the end-of-life versions. Read more about it in Greg Anderson’s blog post.

New PHP Defaults

Pantheon has pushed an update to WordPress and Drupal 7 core upstreams which sets PHP 8.1 as the new default PHP version, rather than 7.4.

Please test this core update thoroughly before deploying to the Live environment. If your site requires an older version of PHP, or if you'd like to upgrade to PHP 8.2, see Pantheon’s documentation on how to manage PHP versions via the pantheon.yml configuration file.

Solr Search for WordPress 2.5.0 Update

We released an update for the Solr Search for WordPress plugin which disables auto-commit by default and allows cron to push solr commits regularly instead.

This drastically improves the performance of large sites and avoids 503 errors related to hard committing on every update. This update is recommended for all WordPress sites currently running the plugin.

You can still enable auto-commit by explicitly setting SOLRPOWER_DISABLE_AUTOCOMMIT to false.

Pantheon Advanced Page Cache WordPress Plugin Updates

We released an update for the Pantheon Advanced Page Cache WordPress plugin which adds a filter to allow disabling surrogate keys for posts' taxonomy terms. This can be especially helpful for posts with large numbers of taxonomies (such as WooCommerce products with a large number of global attributes).

For more information, see Pantheon documentation.

Platform Updates

Drupal 7.98

Drupal 7.98 is available on the Pantheon platform. Users may update their sites immediately. Detailed information on applying and debugging core updates can be found in the Core Updates documentation.

WP-CLI 2.8.1

WP-CLI 2.8.1 is now live on the platform.

Deprecation of Obsolete TLS 1.2 Cipher Suites

In Pantheon's continual efforts to stay up to date with modern web security standards, Pantheon is removing support for a certain set of cipher suites for TLS 1.2. By removing support for specific TLS 1.2 ciphers, Pantheon is enhancing overall platform security. This change ensures that the websites hosted on Pantheon will only use stronger and more secure encryption protocols, which helps protect sensitive information transmitted between users and the websites.

The following obsolete TLS 1.2 ciphers have known vulnerabilities and have been removed:

• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
• TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384
• TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
• TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
• TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA

Pantheon has proactively identified and communicated with affected customers. No action is required at this time, but if you have any questions/concerns, please feel free to reach out to your Account Team at Pantheon or to Pantheon Support via a ticket or chat.

Feature and Product Release Updates

Integrated Composer

Pantheon customers can now re-run Integrated Composer builds via Terminus - without creating a new commit. Previously, pushing a new commit to the Dashboard was the only way to trigger a build. Occasionally site developers experience failed builds for external reasons (external repo issue, broken key, etc.). This update brings even greater functionality and flexibility to Integrated Composer.

Community

Gain access to a knowledge-sharing community of WebOps thought leaders who are embracing the tools and best practices of WebOps to create magic on the internet, while unlocking limited-edition swag & other amazing perks for completing Pantheon Missions.

Join the new Pantheon Community Hub today to start earning!

Platform Updates

WordPress 6.2.1

WordPress 6.2.1 is available on the Pantheon platform. Users may update their sites immediately. Detailed information on applying and debugging core updates can be found in the Core Updates documentation.

WP-CLI 2.8.0

WP-CLI 2.8.0 is now live on the platform.

Feature and Product Release Updates

Launch Check Updates

With Launch Check, Pantheon customers can find out in seconds the health of their Drupal and WordPress websites - including best practices on site configurations. These reports are found in the Site Dashboard under the Status tab and are accessible by site team members. Recent updates to the "Status" dashboard include improved WordPress Multisite compatibility, as well as a security update to better prevent XSS attacks.

Platform Updates

WordPress 6.2

WordPress 6.2 is available on the Pantheon platform. Users may update their sites immediately. Detailed information on applying and debugging core updates can be found in the Core Updates documentation.

Feature and Product Release Updates

Cache Hit Ratio Metrics

Cache Hit Ratio data is now available on the site Dashboard under the Live Environment's Metrics tab. A site's Cache Hit Ratio measures how efficiently the Global CDN is being leveraged to give users the fastest response time vs using a site's resources to process requests. This information has also been added to Terminus env:metrics command.

Platform Updates

Drupal 10.0.3

Drupal 10.0.3 is available for production sites. To learn more about creating a Drupal 10 site on Pantheon or updating a Drupal 9 site to Drupal 10, refer to our documentation.

Drupal 9.5.3

Drupal 9.5.3 is available for production sites and includes backwards-compatible improvements. Drupal 9 sites on Pantheon use Integrated Composer, enabling one-click core updates through the Dashboard.

Drupal 9.4.11

Drupal 9.4.11 is available for production sites and includes backwards-compatible improvements. Drupal 9 sites on Pantheon use Integrated Composer, enabling one-click core updates through the Dashboard.

WordPress 6.1.1

WordPress 6.1.1 is available on the Pantheon platform. This release fixes 29 bug fixes in Core and 21 bug fixes for the block editor and users may update their sites immediately. Detailed information on applying and debugging core updates can be found in the Core Updates documentation.

Feature and Product Release Updates

Enterprise Billing Center

Pantheon’s new Enterprise Billing Center brings accessible and detailed reporting to you via the Pantheon Dashboard. Use the this feature to easily understand your invoices or to see engaging data visualizations that show how individual sites contribute to overall costs. To learn more about Pantheon’s Enterprise Billing Center, refer to our documentation.

Front-End Sites

Pantheon Front-End Sites provide users with tools that improve the experience of building a decoupled site. Front-End Sites expedite the delivery of key functionality for site creation, accelerate time to value for new users, and improve development and editorial experiences. You can build a decoupled site on Pantheon using your own configuration or with one of our trusted development starter kits. To learn more about Front-End Sites, refer to our documentation.

Localdev

Pantheon will discontinue support for its built-in Localdev feature in June 2023. Check out this blog post to learn more about well-supported local development alternatives or read our documentation to learn more about this feature.

Pantheon Object Cache

Services like Redis greatly accelerate web performance by offloading heavy database and fileservice interactions to a fast in-memory cache. Pantheon Object Cache Update allows customers the ability to adopt Redis server 6.x. This capability is made possible by adopting Pantheon’s modernized infrastructure and cloud operations frameworks. To learn more about Object Cache, refer to our documentation.

Roles and Permissions

Enhancements to the Workspace dashboard allow admins greater visibility and control over user roles, access levels, and privileges. Now, admins can perform periodic audits of users and permissions by Site or Workspace, communicate development work to specific users by Site group, and quickly onboard and offboard users at the Workspace and Site level. To learn more about roles and permissions, refer to our documentation.

WordPress Multisite

Pantheon users with Gold tier accounts (or above) now have the option to create their own WordPress Multisite. To enable the WordPress Multisite option on your account, contact your Customer Success Manager. To learn about WordPress Multisite, refer to our documentation.

Customer Education

Documentation

Pantheon documentation now has a new location. Go to docs.pantheon.io for information on all Pantheon products and features. The Pantheon docs site is deployed using Front-End Sites, with redirects from pantheon.io behind AGCDN. Ensure you check out our much quicker and improved docs site.

Pantheon Learning

Pantheon Learning is now available. Use Pantheon Learning to learn about the Pantheon platform through self-paced courses and virtual instructor-led training. You can find courses on New Relic, Front-End Sites, Autopilot, and much more in our training hub.

Platform Improvements

Drupal 10.0.2

Drupal 10.0.2 is available for production sites. Drupal 10.0.x will receive security coverage until December 2023 when Drupal 10.2.0 is released.

Drupal 9.5.2

Drupal 9.5.2 is available for production sites. This is a minor version (feature release) of Drupal 9. Drupal 9.5.x will receive security coverage until November 1, 2023 when Drupal 9 is end-of-life. Learn more about Drupal 9 and the Drupal core release cycle.

Drupal 9.4.9

Drupal 9.4.9 is available for production sites. This is a patch (bugfix) release of Drupal 9 and is ready for use on production sites. Drupal 9.4.x will receive security coverage until June 2023 when Drupal 10.1.0 is released.