Pantheon release notes

The Drupal CMS upstream has been updated to version 2. Newly created sites using the Drupal CMS upstream will now use Drupal CMS 2, which includes a curated set of modules and configuration designed to help you get started faster.

This update only applies to sites created with the Drupal CMS upstream. Sites using the Drupal 10 or Drupal 11 upstreams are not affected. Existing Drupal CMS sites are also not affected — refer to the Drupal CMS documentation for upgrade guidance.

Our documentation has instructions on how to configure a new Drupal CMS site.

Pantheon's Solr search Drupal module, search_api_pantheon, has been updated with two new releases — 8.4.0 and 8.4.1. These releases include significant architectural improvements and enhanced developer experience.

We recommend upgrading directly to 8.4.1.

What's Changed in 8.4.0

• License corrected to GPL-2.0+ to align with Drupal standards.
• Major code refactoring resulting in a 60% reduction in code length.
• Simplified service architecture for better maintainability.
• Removed unnecessary overrides for Guzzle, Endpoint, and the Solarium client.
• Improved local development experience. Server connector configuration fields are now editable in local environments and automatically overridden when deployed to Pantheon.
• Drush commands automatically use the first enabled server with the Pantheon connector. The server_id argument is no longer needed or accepted.
  • For more details, see the diagnostic commands section in README.md: https://git.drupalcode.org/project/search_api_pantheon/-/blob/8.4.x/README.md#diagnostic-commands

Dependency Updates:

• Removed direct dependencies on guzzlehttp/guzzle, symfony/finder, symfony/yaml, and other packages now provided transitively through search_api_solr (these dependencies are still available but come through search_api_solr instead).
  • Impact: No action required unless custom code directly uses these services
• Removed kint-php/kint dependency.

What's Changed in 8.4.1

• Restored the search_api_pantheon_admin submodule (removed in 8.4.0) as an obsolete module to support smooth upgrades from earlier versions.

Action Required

1. Back up your database before proceeding with the upgrade.
2. Test thoroughly in a non-production environment before deploying to your live site.

Pantheon Search Server Migration

Since version 8.3.0, the default server ID is pantheon_search. New installations use this automatically. Existing sites upgrading from earlier versions can migrate from pantheon_solr8 to pantheon_search via an update hook.

If you proceed with migration, the update hook will update the server ID from pantheon_solr8 to pantheon_search, reassign all indexes to the new server, and flag content for reindexing.

After running database updates (drush updb), reindex your content:

To opt out of migration and continue using pantheon_solr8, add this to your settings.php before running database updates:

Upgrade Instructions

For detailed installation and upgrade instructions, please refer to:

• README.md
• CHANGELOG.txt

Important: Version Support

Version 8.4.x is now the only maintained version; support for 8.3.x and 8.2.x has been discontinued.

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.
• Limited-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's Content Publisher has officially entered General Availability. All features previously available in Public Preview are now available for general use without any restrictions. This milestone also comes alongside a broad set of new capabilities announced separately but part of the generally available product:

• Content Publisher MCP server to enable customers to integrate and use Content Publisher in their agentic workflow.
• The support for Microsoft Word, through the MS Word add-in that lets users of the Microsoft 365 suite achieve similar things as what our users have been doing with Google Docs: streamlining the publishing process from the text processor to the website.
• A brand new content quality assistant allowing the ability to better address accessibility issues in content.
• A new version of the Content Publisher WordPress plugin that, among other things, brings support for Custom Post Types and Custom Fields from Content Publisher to WordPress.
• And many other improvements.

For more information on Content Publisher, check out our documentation site for guidance on using Content Publisher.

To get started with Content Publisher, visit the product page on the Pantheon’s website. If you are curious to engage, get in touch in the #content-publisher channel of our recently relaunched Pantheon Community Slack!

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