Setting up an Obsidian Vault for the first time

General

Again, nothing much to change here. Feel free to explore, but the default settings are fine.

This is the fun part, useful for customizing (read: procrastinating) your Obsidian interface
Themes - click "Manage" and choose a theme from a wide variety of community-made themes. I like:
- Primary by Cecilia May
- Minimal by Kepano (customize with the Minimal Theme Settings community plug-in)
- PLN by PipeItToDevNull
After you install, you can further customize the theme using the Style Settings community plugin
Feel free to explore, but most of the other default settings are fine.

Also known as keyboard shortcuts. The most useful ones for a beginner (that might be quite specific to Obsidian) would be
- CMD or CTRL + P to open the Command Palette
- CMD or CTRL + O to open a note
- CMD or CTRL + G to open graph view
Some hotkeys I find useful to assign
- ALT + < toggle left side pane
- ALT + > toggle right side pane
- ALT + P to toggle source mode/preview mode

Very useful plugins that are built into your Vault, here are some that I think are important:
- Backlinks - for bidirectional linking
- Canvas - for creating graphs, charts or otherwise taking note of things that are otherwise difficult to capture with text only
- Command Palette - the heart of Obsidian, will be your go-to as you get used to the environment
- Files - self-explanatory
- Graph View - a visual interface for your notes
- Outline - self-explanatory, opens on the right side pane
- Quick switcher - keyboard-centric way to jump through current notes
- Search - self-explanatory
- Web Viewer - open web pages inside of Obsidian instead of in a separate browser. Lessens friction
- Workspaces - save and load workspaces for different projects or activities, another great plug-in that lessens friction
Core plug-ins that are OK but have community counterparts that are a bit better (in parenthesis)
- Templates (Templater)
- Word count (Better Word Count)

For customizing themes and improving the work interface
- Minimal Theme Settings (self-explanatory)
- Style Settings - available settings will change depending on what plugins and themes
- Workspaces Plus - Workspaces Core Plugin must be enabled. This lets you save workspaces for different projects.
For citations and exporting final outputs
- Zotero Integration - essential for academic work, links Zotero and Obsidian. Enables easy creation of Reading Notes and export of annotations from Zotero to Obsidian. Also, enables easy insertion of parenthetical citations in Obsidian without needing to go back to Zotero.
- Pandoc Reference List -