Pantheon release notes

The sqlsrv and pdo_sqlsrv PECL extensions (v5.13.0) are now available for PHP 8.3 and 8.4. This gives sites native SQL Server connectivity beyond the existing ODBC driver support.

Additionally, Microsoft ODBC Driver 17 and 18 for SQL Server are now installed for PHP 8.2 and later.

For more information on available PHP extensions and runtime configuration, refer to the PHP Runtime Generation 2 documentation.

We will be launching a new Slack instance for our Pantheon Customer Community on Monday, March 9th, 2026.

What's new

• Members-only Community. The new Slack Community will be exclusive to verified Pantheon customers and partners.
• Multichannel. The new Slack will have channels built around your interest so every conversation feels relevant and worth showing up to.
• Quarterly roadmap reviews. You'll hear directly from our product team on what's coming next.
• Dedicated Product Feedback channel. A dedicated #product-feedback channel where you can share ideas, vote on what matters most, and send feedback straight to our product team without ever leaving Slack.
• Quarterly challenges. We will be launching quarterly challenges with awesome perks and giveaways just for showing up and being part of the community.
• Limtied-edition swag. Because being an amazing customer has its perks.

What's not changing

• We're staying on Slack, just moving to a new workspace. Same app to connect with Pantheon and the wider community.
• All channels, users and conversations will be moving over. We will still be your peer-to-peer resource. Site- and workspace-specific questions and support should still go through the normal support channels.
• Same workspace URL. Once the migration is complete, we'll be using the same workspace URL you've always used to access the Pantheon Community Slack.

Action required

• If you are a member in our existing Community Slack and using a different email to sign into Pantheon (e.g. a business email) than what you are using to sign onto the Pantheon Slack, we ask that you update your email addresses to match by end-of-day March 6, 2026.
• If you are unable to connect to the Pantheon Community Slack after the migration on March 9, 2026, please submit this form and our team will review.

Considerations

• The migration is happening on Friday, March 6th. There will be 2 days of data not migrated from the existing (old) Slack instance into the new Community Slack.

You can now enable PHP's JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler on Pantheon. JIT compiles PHP bytecode into native machine code at runtime, which can improve performance for CPU-intensive workloads. JIT support is available for sites running PHP 8.3 or higher on PHP Runtime Generation 2.

Configuration

Add the php_jit key to your site's pantheon.yml file to control the JIT compilation level:

The following values are accepted:

A low allocation is a good starting point for most sites, offering a performance boost with minimal memory overhead. Choose high if your site runs CPU-intensive operations (such as complex calculations, image processing, or heavy data transformations) and would benefit from caching more compiled code in memory.

For full details on memory allocation by plan, requirements, testing considerations, and how to disable JIT, refer to the PHP JIT guide.

Version 1.3.5 of the Pantheon Content Publisher WordPress plugin is now available.

What's new?

• ACF integration — Sync Content Publisher metadata fields to Advanced Custom Fields. Define field mappings per post type in the plugin's Integration tab and metadata values are automatically applied on every publish.
• Custom post type support — Publish content to any public post type registered on your WordPress site. Administrators can set the target post type per collection, or select "Chosen by the author" to let document authors control it via the wp-post-type metadata field.

Update to 1.3.5 from the WordPress dashboard under Plugins > Installed Plugins, or download it from the WordPress Plugin Repository.

For more details, see the plugin changelog.

Pantheon Content Publisher now supports Microsoft Word thanks to our new Microsoft Add-in. This add-in allows organizations and teams to publish content directly to their website from their Microsoft 365 account in Microsoft Word.

What's new?

• Write, edit, collaborate, and publish from Microsoft Word (online and desktop app) to your website
• Preview how your content will look before it goes live
• Collaborative editing: Use comments, suggestions, and other collaboration features available on Microsoft 365

Documentation

Learn how to set up Content Publisher on your Drupal, WordPress, or Next.js website:

• How to install the Office 365 it
• Publishing with the Microsoft Word add-in
• Content Publisher general documentation

Next.js 16 is now the default version for new site creation on Pantheon. When creating a new Next.js site, you will automatically get Next.js 16, the latest version of the leading React framework for building web applications.

What's New

Next.js 16 introduces Cache Components, moving the framework further in the direction of "dynamic by default" architecture. Pantheon's horizontally scalable container infrastructure with shared caches is well-suited to support this direction.

Creating New Sites

When you create a new Next.js site, it will default to Next.js 16. You can create sites via Terminus:

You can also create Next.js sites through the Pantheon Dashboard, which will automatically use Next.js 16.

Additional Information

For more details about Next.js on Pantheon, see our Next.js documentation.

Content Publisher now includes a quality assistant — an intelligent review system that helps you create better content before you publish. Starting with accessibility checking at no added cost, the quality assistant will expand to help ensure your content meets brand standards, performs well in search, and satisfies compliance requirements.

What’s new?

The quality assistant's automatic accessibility checking helps catch common issues before you publish:

• Missing alt text on images
• Improper heading hierarchy
• Non-descriptive link text
• and more...

Issues are displayed in the sidebar with plain-language descriptions of the problem, why it affects users with disabilities, how to fix it, and where it occurs in your document.

For more information, see the quality assistant in the Content Publisher documentation.

The @pantheon-systems/nextjs-cache-handler package is now publicly available. It enables persistent caching on Pantheon's Next.js platform, so your cached data survives across deployments and server restarts.

Features

• Works out of the box on Pantheon — The handler auto-detects your environment. No extra configuration needed beyond installing the handler in your Next.js application.
• Full support for Next.js caching APIs — revalidateTag(), revalidatePath(), and ISR work as expected, including automatic CDN cache invalidation so your visitors see updates immediately.
• Next.js 16 use cache support — Compatible with the new cacheHandlers API and 'use cache' directive introduced in Next.js 16.
• Smart build deploys — When you deploy a new build, page caches refresh automatically while your data caches are preserved, avoiding unnecessary re-fetches from APIs and databases.
• Local development friendly — Uses file-based caching in development so you can test caching behavior locally without any cloud dependencies.
• Debug logging — Set CACHE_DEBUG=true to see detailed cache hit/miss/set activity for troubleshooting.

Getting started

Install the package:

Then configure your Next.js application to use the cache handler. For full setup instructions, usage examples, and configuration options, see the README on GitHub.