Before making a sandbox site you must have a developer account. Request Developer Access

To create a new sandbox site:

• Log in to your Pantheon dashboard using the single sign-on method with your eid.utexas.edu email -  https://dashboard.pantheon.io
• Click the "Create Site" button on your user dashboard
• Supply a site name and click "Continue"
  
  • The site name will be used in the Pantheon "platform domain" for your DEV, TEST, and LIVE environments (e.g. "My Awesome Site" becomes "https://dev-my-awesome-site.pantheonsite.io").
  • Once a sandbox site is promoted to a paid site plan,  a custom domain can be connected to the Live environment (https://pantheon.io/docs/guides/launch/domains/)
  • We recommend that you select a consistent prefix for your department/organization and prefix all of your site names accordingly (e.g., “laits,” “libraries”)
• Next, you will be given options to select an organizational distribution, site type, or site distribution on which to base your new site:
  
  • Custom Distributions: UT Drupal Kit and WordPress for Texas are the ITS-supported distributions which include UT-branded themes and the necessary modules to enable UTLogin SAML authentication
  • Site Types: developers not wishing to use an organizational distribution can select "vanilla" Drupal or WordPress, with no customizations or UT-specific code.

If you need EID authentication for content editors or university-approved branding, you should always use one of the two available custom distributions -- UT Drupal Kit or WordPress for Texas.

The decision of which distribution to use for your new site is FINAL. You cannot change the distribution for a site after the fact, but would have to create a new site from scratch.