# Best Practices

Work in Progress

This section is under active development. Content is being consolidated from across the documentation.

Best practices for building robust, maintainable systems with NATS. Each guide covers a specific area in depth.

## Topics

* **[Naming Conventions](/guides/best-practices/naming-conventions)** — subject naming, hierarchies, and organization
* **[Error Handling](/guides/best-practices/error-handling)** — connection management, reconnection, and resilience
* **[Message Design](/guides/best-practices/message-design)** — serialization, message sizes, and schema strategies

## Quick Reference

| Problem                                  | Solution                                                                           |
| ---------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Messages lost before subscribers connect | Use [JetStream](/docs/jetstream) for persistence                                   |
| Too many unique subjects                 | Use wildcards and hierarchical naming                                              |
| Slow subscriber backs up                 | Process messages asynchronously or use [queue groups](/docs/concepts/queue-groups) |