MO2 is still the way to go for more control, but vortex isn't too bad either, it's just that most people use MO2 at least on the old sub. Mods are mostly preference. Even cleaning the vanilla master plug-ins is debatable. If you have the time, I would experiment with wabbajack lists. If you just want fixes/essentials and want to do everything else yourself, there is Skyrim Modding Essentials by Phoenix.
The Dragonborn's Fate is a good modding guide. I think The Phoenix Flavour also has a guide, or they used to, but I am not sure if it is still around.
My suggestion is, pick a visual-only wabbajack list (Aurora, or AVO NG, or similar) and join thier discord to answer any questions while adding your own preferred gameplay / follower / other mods. This is how i learned, fwiw (not that i claim to be a modding guru of any sort)
If you haven't tried wabbajack yet test it out.
I had heard of that. How well does it would if I don't have a premium Nexus account?
It will direct you to where you can download the mod. Premium isn't necessary, there's just some manual clicking involved and will take longer.
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