Xah Lee has a couple of nice posts on managing window configurations. One posts deals with having a single (large) frame and dividing it into several windows. The other deals with the opposite case of having several frames with one or two windows in each. I tend to prefer a single large frame (although I sometimes pop up another temporarily) while Lee likes several frames.
No matter, between the two posts he’s got you covered. The posts will be useful mostly for n00bs but he does mention winner-mode and windmove, packages that I only recently became aware of and started using, so there may be something there for you even if you’re an old hand.