I’m Ivan, born in Dresden, and the short version is: I love servers, security, and understanding how things actually work underneath.
I never learned any of this in a company. Everything I know came from doing it myself: breaking things in my homelab, running my own servers, self-hosting whatever I could, reading until it clicked, and taking on freelance clients who trusted me to get it right. That path started the day I passed LPIC-1, which opened the door to everything after it.
A big part of why I do this is privacy and digital sovereignty (owning your own data, running your own services, not handing everything to platforms you don’t control). Self-hosting, zero-cookie websites, lean setups: it’s all the same belief that you should be in charge of your own corner of the internet.
I also love web design and building websites, not the WordPress kind, but clean, fast, properly-built sites from the ground up. It turns out the same person who hardens a server can also make a genuinely good website, and I enjoy both ends of that. What I work out along the way I write down here, the explanations I wish I’d had when I started.
I use AI the right way now, to optimize my workflows and speed up my learning, as a tool that sharpens real skills rather than replaces them.
These days I’m studying Cybersecurity at BHT Berlin, deepening the security side of what I’d already been living.
Most businesses use WordPress wrong, and it starts with the wrong host. They end up with slow, insecure, unoptimized websites, often because they never needed WordPress in the first place. Webccino helps businesses who were never really “WordPress users” leave it behind, because they needed a website, not a CMS.
But WordPress has a place in my heart, and plenty of people genuinely do need it. It just rarely gets a host that treats it properly, so I’m building Pressccino: an open source, WordPress-only hosting panel that diagnoses and heals sites instead of waiting for you to notice, and the software Hostccino will run on. I got my CCNA before starting on the hosting side, because I wanted to really understand how the internet works before launching a hosting company, not just stand on top of abstractions.
Webccino gets businesses off WordPress when they never needed it. Hostccino serves the ones who do. Two ends of the same belief.
Where I’m From
Both my parents are Syrian. I was born in Dresden, raised in Syria until I was 15, and I carry both with me: there’s a German part of me and a Syrian part, and I’m proud of both. I speak German, English, and Arabic. Dresden is home; I genuinely love this city and don’t ever plan to leave it.
Certifications
- CCNA: Cisco Certified Network Associate · earned May 2026 · verify
- LPIC-1: Linux Professional Institute Certified · earned Feb 2023 · verify
- Linux Essentials: Linux Professional Institute · earned Aug 2022
What I Work With
- Operating systems & servers: Ubuntu (my daily driver), Apache, NGINX, Caddy
- DevOps & automation: Docker (my go-to), Ansible, Bash scripting
- Security: server hardening, UFW (custom setups + scripts), iptables, nftables
- Networking: CCNA-level networking, home network configuration, helping small Dresden businesses set up their routers properly
- Programming: Python and Bash today. Learned and used C#, C, C++, and Java in the past.
- Web: building clean, fast, properly-coded websites (no WordPress bloat)
What I’m Doing Now
Alongside the WordPress work there’s Educcino, a Nachhilfe tutoring academy in Dresden for students supported through the BuT programme, and the Cybersecurity degree at BHT.
The current version of all this lives on Now.
Say Hello
- Email: hello@ivansalloum.com
- GitHub: @ivansalloum
- Instagram: @ivansalloum
Want the longer version? Read my CV.