[CentOS] software installation - good practice

Howdy,

I tend to try out many open source apps/packages - games, editors to
media tools. I have a bad habit of downloading and extracting source
in the /var/tmp directory and then doing configure-make-install
process. I am not sure of best practice (good practices) to be
followed when installing any software. For example how and where to
keep the src. Any comments and/or resources would be really helpful.

-
Thanks,
CS.