I was using janus for a long time, but what's preached at:

http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2011/12/vim-revisited/

made a lot of sense so I am starting back from 0.

Plugins and whatnot

Pathogen

for easy plugin management

https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen#readme

Solarize

for colouring

https://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized

Depends on iTerm being setup with Solarized colour schemes as well, otherwise it is like a clown car. https://github.com/altercation/solarized/tree/master/iterm2-colors-solarized

Syntastic

For linting

https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic