A long time ago, Ovid is said to have issued the following warning about Emacs configuration files:
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
Add little to little and there will be a big pile.
My Emacs configuration is currently a Big Pile. I do not recommend
cribbing anything from here, with the possible exception of the method
I use to get org-plus-contrib to always load, if present, even if
org is present.
If you are looking for sources of inspiration for your own Emacs configuration, I suggest the following people’s repositories as a starting point, which represent a good range of approaches to the problem: