User guide
Everything the platform offers, what each part is for, and how to get the most out of it — in one place.
What is Architectena
Architectena is the professional network for architects and designers. It brings together the things scattered across a dozen other tools — a feed of ideas, a portfolio for your work, a jobs board, office pages, communities, a résumé, a places atlas, and direct messaging — into one place built specifically for the architecture world. Every feature is completely free, and you can use it in English or Arabic.
First steps
The home dashboard & feed
Your home page is your command centre: a personalised greeting, quick links, trending content, suggestions of people to follow, and your activity stream. The feed has three tabs:
What you can do — the services
Posts
Share ideas, articles, tutorials, critiques and questions with images and attachments. Like, comment, save and follow topics. Drafts and private posts are supported.
Open Posts →Projects
Build a visual portfolio. Each project has a cover, gallery, location, year, programme and team — and can be linked to an office. Images are optimised automatically.
Open Projects →Jobs
Find or post work. Filter by field, country and salary, view listings on a map, save searches for email alerts, and apply with a full form or one-click Quick apply.
Open Jobs →Offices
Create a page for your firm — logo, cover, description, staff, portfolio and job board. Follow offices to hear about their new work and openings.
Open Offices →Groups
Join or start communities around a topic, city or school. Post, discuss and react with members; admins manage membership and announcements.
Open Groups →Q&A
Ask practical questions about codes, materials, methods and practice — and answer others. Helpful answers are voted up so the best rise to the top.
Open Q&A →Situ — Places
A shared architectural atlas. Pin buildings and sites you find significant with notes, photos and coordinates; browse everyone's pins on a world map and discuss them.
Open Situ →Hall
A curated hall celebrating notable architecture and the people behind it — a place to discover landmark work and the stories around it.
Open Hall →Résumé
A living CV with education, experience, skills, languages and certifications. Export it to PDF, and control whether other members can see it.
Open Résumé →Messaging
Direct and group chats with other members — text, links and attachments, with read receipts and typing indicators in real time.
Open Messages →Your spaces & tools you might miss
Beyond the public sections, the platform gives you private working spaces and tools that are easy to overlook — here are the most useful:
Workspace
Your private hub. It gathers everything that's yours — posts and drafts, saved items, projects, job applications and recent activity — in one dashboard so you never have to hunt for it.
Open your Workspace →Office workspace
If you run or work at an office, its Office Environment is a closed workspace for the team — manage staff and roles, post jobs, add projects, and see who's engaging with your page. Open it from the Manage button on your office.
Go to Offices →Global search
One search bar across the whole platform — find people, posts, projects, jobs, offices and groups, with instant previews as you type.
Open Search →Connections manager
Followers, following, follow requests, and your mutes, restricts and blocks — review and manage every relationship from one screen.
Manage connections →Recruiter dashboard
Posting jobs? Track every applicant across all your listings in one place — review applications, shortlist and respond.
Open recruiter dashboard →Settings & privacy
Control your account, language, privacy and what each part of your profile shows. Make your account private, or hide individual fields.
Open Settings →Security
Protect your account with two-factor authentication, review active sessions, and sign out everywhere if you need to.
Open Security →Engaging with content
Connecting with & managing people
On every profile you'll find a row of controls. Each icon's shape and colour show the current state, and hovering any icon explains exactly what it does. From gentlest to strongest:
Notifications
The bell in the top bar shows new activity in real time — follows, comments, mentions, job and office updates, and more. You decide exactly what reaches you:
Privacy & safety
Account standing — warnings, suspensions & deletion
Architectena is built to stay safe and professional, so a small set of rules is enforced. Almost no member ever runs into this — but here is exactly how it works, so there are no surprises.
What can lead to action
Being reported on its own does not punish anyone — reports go to human moderators who decide, and reporting is private: the person is never told who reported them.
How it escalates, and for how long
What a suspension is like
You can still sign in, but you will see a page showing the reason and a live countdown to when access returns — your account unlocks automatically when the time is up. If you believe a suspension or ban is a mistake, you can appeal right from that page and a moderator will review it.
Deactivating or deleting your own account
This is always your choice, and separate from moderation. From Settings you can deactivate your account — which hides your profile and can be undone simply by signing back in — or permanently delete it, which removes your profile and content for good.
Read the full Community Guidelines →Tips to get the most out of Architectena
Still have a question?
Browse the FAQ for specific how-tos, or reach out and we'll help.