Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

How to Download a WordPress Site for Pantheon?

Pantheon is a popular website hosting platform that provides a reliable and scalable infrastructure for hosting WordPress sites. If you are currently hosting your WordPress site on Pantheon, you might want to back up your site's data as an added layer of security against data loss in case something goes wrong. Thankfully, Pantheon has provided a tool that makes downloading WordPress sites hosted on their platform simple and easy.

Step 1: Install Terminus

The first step is to install Terminus, a command-line interface (CLI) tool created specifically for managing sites hosted on Pantheon. You can find detailed instructions on how to install Terminus on Pantheon's official website.

Step 2: Authenticate Terminus

Once you have installed Terminus, you need to authenticate it by entering your Pantheon account information. This will enable Terminus to manage your WordPress site hosted on Pantheon. To authenticate Terminus, follow these steps:

1. Open your terminal or command prompt and enter the command terminus auth:login.
2. You will be asked to enter your Pantheon email address and password.
3. After entering your account information, Terminus will authenticate your account.

Step 3: Download the WordPress Site

Now that Terminus is authenticated and has access to your WordPress site hosted on Pantheon, you can download your site's data to your local machine by following these steps:

1. Open your terminal or command prompt and enter the command terminus site:list.
2. This will display a list of all the sites hosted on your Pantheon account. Find the site you want to download and copy its UUID, which is a unique identifier for each site.
3. Enter the command terminus backup:get <site-uuid> --element=all --to=~/Downloads/<backup-name>.tar.gz, replacing <site-uuid> with the UUID you just copied and <backup-name> with the name you want to give to your backup file.
4. The backup process will take some time, depending on the size of your WordPress site. Once the backup is complete, you will find a compressed .tar.gz file with your chosen backup name in your Downloads folder.

Conclusion

Backing up your WordPress site is essential, and Pantheon has made it easier with their Terminus tool. By following these simple steps, you can download and store your site's data on your local machine, giving you peace of mind knowing that you have an additional layer of security in case something goes wrong.