I recently overhauled my Emacs config — it's on github here: https://github.com/stafu/.emacs.d

I'm using a package called use-package, which gets installed via MELPA if it isn't found on first run, then goes and installs and configures a bunch of other packages which will also download if needed. You can see how this works in the init-packages file: https://github.com/stafu/.emacs.d/blob/master/init/init-pack...

Some of my favourite packages are magit (incredible interface to git - http://magit.github.io/), multiple-cursors (nice demo here: http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html), expand-region (another nice demo: http://emacsrocks.com/e09.html), and projectile (https://github.com/bbatsov/projectile).

If you want to see what's new, check my guides: http://tuhdo.github.io/

For example, you should take a look at Projectile and Helm Projectile: http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-projectile.html

Prelude (https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude) has a pretty nice set of basic dotfiles. I find that Emacs with Prelude is much more fun to use than vanilla Emacs.