Q1 Product Announcement

For Q1, we’re releasing new features to enhance security, encourage innovation, accelerate productivity, and streamline management for web teams. Check them out in the following post.

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Enhancing Security, Encouraging Innovation, Accelerating Productivity, and Streamlining Management for Web Teams

Keeping up with a continually evolving, often hostile web is difficult work. Whether you’re dealing with malicious actors attempting to crash your site or looking to harness the latest in open-source frameworks for building a cutting-edge web experience, it can all be a bit daunting, to say the least. 

Understanding the common pain points of modern web teams, we are announcing enhanced security, a rock-solid development environment that supports PHP 8, technology partnerships that accelerate the time to market of web projects, and streamlined management for your website portfolio. 

Dive in below to see what we’re unveiling this quarter. 

Enhanced Security

Advanced Global CDN with Rate Limiting for Enhanced Protection from Malicious Attacks 

The latest feature available for our Advanced Global CDN, Rate Limiting, allows organizations of all sizes to control the rate of web traffic and requests to their sites, throttling automated and malicious traffic in the process. This early access feature includes volumetric vectors, such as brute-force login attempts and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, that pose a risk to those tasked with keeping their mission-critical sites up and running.

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Why Is Rate Limiting Important?

For organizations with high-value assets, the ability to limit traffic volume in place of outright blocks adds sophistication to the defense of their website or entire domain. Rate Limiting provides extra peace of mind for an often hostile web, one where brute-force login and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks are commonplace. 

The time and resources involved with bringing your website back up and running after an attack pose a significant impact on your bottom line, making Rate Limiting a vital feature for organizations whose websites are an essential part of their business.

New Capabilities on the Platform

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Use Pantheon’s Deployment Pipeline with PHP 8

With WordPress and Drupal core updating for PHP 8 compatibility, we have made available the latest version of PHP on our platform. PHP 8 allows developers to leverage syntax changes that make their jobs easier, like constructor property promotion and named arguments. But maybe the most headache-relieving feature of them all will be the addition of some sensible, sure-to-be-used string functions: str_contains, str_starts_with, and str_ends_with. See the full PHP 8.0.0 announcement for a comprehensive list of changes.

We’re encouraging developers to use our Multidev environments in conjunction with our Dev, Test, Live workflow — while updating to PHP 8. By using Multidev while making the switch, your dev team can ensure everything on their sites works as intended without affecting anything in a live environment.

What About Teams Running Previous PHP Versions?

Pantheon won’t force developers to take the jump to PHP 8 unless they want to, of course. Ultimately, we’d love for you to try out PHP 8 — to make your dev team’s job easier, but we’ll never force you to adopt the latest version. 

Script It and Forget It with Terminus 3 

Terminus 3 is the latest version of Pantheon’s command line tool. Nearly anything that can be done in the dashboard can be achieved using the Terminus 3 command line tool, from everyday workflows to the automation of previously time-intensive tasks. 

Terminus is particularly useful as a wrapper for WP-CLI and Drush — when working directly with WordPress and Drupal content management systems (CMSes).

What’s New Versus Older Versions?

Like the Pantheon platform, Terminus 3 now works with PHP 8 for those looking to use Pantheon’s Command Line tool with the latest version of PHP. 

Additionally, you’ll now enjoy Terminus 3’s simpler development of custom functionality via plugin management commands, along with easier installation of Terminus with the same tool (like Homebrew for Mac; apt for Ubuntu) as you’d use for other command line tools. 

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Quickly Build and Adopt New Web Experiences

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Introducing the Technology Partner Directory 

Pantheon unveils the Technology Partner Directory, giving organizations the ability to easily find pre-built web solutions and applications for a variety of use cases — including creating specialized Drupal templates and accelerating content staging and syndication. 

The Technology Partner Directory caters to organizations looking to rapidly adopt new capabilities and build rich web experiences, often in a short amount of time. It complements our Agency Directory, where you can find talented partners to build bespoke and differentiated software to power your digital experiences. 

Pre-built Web Solutions Driving Results in the Real World

Interested in what these pre-built web solutions and integrations would look like for your organization? See a few real-world examples below. 

• Content Sync has made content staging and syndication for multiple sites easy, making this best practice easier to adopt.

• The team behind Emulsify, created by strategic partner Four Kitchens, is focused on helping organizations scale their designs across multiple properties while reducing cost, streamlining workflows, and improving accessibility.

• Pantheon strategic partner and NYC-based creative agency Wondersauce created the first open platform for virtual and hybrid events called Ospre — all detailed in the following blog post. 

• Mediacurrent, a Pantheon Strategic Partner that designs, builds, and manages Drupal websites for some of the most recognizable brands and institutions in the world, gets universities up and running with a full-fledged Drupal website in less than 30 days; see how in the following blog post on RainU CMS. 

   

Streamlined Management and Maintenance of Sites

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Autopilot Productivity Statistics Quantify Time Saved 

Pantheon’s Autopilot turbocharges your web team’s productivity by automatically detecting, performing, and validating updates using visual regression testing (VRT), then deploying these updates to WordPress and Drupal CMSes.  

Now with Autopilot Productivity Statistics, you can view the estimated hours your team has saved versus manually performing updates to your CMS, along with the total number of updates and sites using Autopilot. This is all integrated into the Pantheon dashboard, allowing your team to easily quantify the impact Autopilot has on your organization and clients alike. 

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Personal Billing Center: Bulk Site Payment Updates 

Bulk site payment updates allow organizations to update their credit card billing information across multiple sites in one seamless step. This new feature can be found in the personal workspace Billing Center, which provides a centralized location for account management, including maintenance of your subscriptions and invoices. 

Interactive Invoice Report Simplifies Website Portfolio Management

Get a comprehensive snapshot of your entire website portfolio — including important information like site details, new additions, and updates — with our Interactive Invoice Report. For added convenience, you can filter your website portfolio by site owner and plan, along with searching by individual site name. This feature is found in the Billing Center of the Pantheon dashboard. 

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Learn More About Pantheon’s Latest Features

For a comprehensive look at everything Pantheon is releasing this quarter, take a look at our What’s New page for more information.