[Asterisk-Users] Best practices direction

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 13:58 -0500, Robert Webb wrote:
> Ok,
> 
>   With all that has been going on with the list today I may be sticking
> my head out of my gopher hole and find a 12 gauge at point blank. But I
> am going to take the chance....

/me points 12 gauge towards the clay pigeons where it belongs.  

> I have just started using * about a month ago. I have a small unit setup
> at home running all my PSTN and VoIP lines. I am using external SIP and
> IAX soft phones from work and everything is running. I want to do more,
> but before I do, I want to see if there are any "best practices" guide
> lines out there. 

Not really. The only thing I know of is to separate functions out into
separate contexts and put users in mostly blank contexts then include
functional contexts where needed. If you have test extensions, you may
want to put them in a testing context and then make a single extension
available to you that jumps to the new testing context to reduce the
head scratching later on when you try and figure out why you can't seem
to get where you thought you should have been able to.

> I have my extensions.conf setup, but to me it looks really messy. At the
> moment, I do have a lot of test extensions in there that I will be
> clearing out that should help. But I still would like to know what is
> the preferred way of setting up the config files for optimum/clean use.

It is mostly personal preference. Note that I don't think apache even
has a good guide line either. The closest I have seen is the separating
out of a large config file into smaller chunks that are related. After
that, it starts to be just whatever you feel you can manage.

> I do my best to search for the answers on the list, wikki and google
> before coming here. I have seen a couple of books available on eBay and
> other places that are dedicated to Asterisk. But I have also read, that
> at least one book, is pretty much a ripoff.
> 
> I still have a lot to lear, mainly things like perl, mySQL and other
> interfaces, in order to do the things I want. I have learned a lot from
> this list so far and am still learning. But I would like to learn the
> right way before the wrong way so I do not have to retrain myself later.

But you did the best thing possible, you choose to learn. You choose to
put forth effort. You choose to express a specific question framed in
what you know and have already learned so others could see you have put
forth effort and didn't necessarily want someone else to do your work
for you.
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>