Hi everyone!
what I’m trying to do without much success due to my inexperience, is to make the simplest and optimum rig for a humanoid character, the minimum constraints, no multiple layer bones, I mean bare functional bones, simplest IK, easy spine and neck.
Sometimes you don’t need to do “the incredibles” just a simple character telling a simple story. I often get frustrated with very complex rigs and I loose motivation.
So, anyone share your rig tricks?
I don’t know if there is even such a thing as the simplest and most optimum rig. Be it for a humanoid or not. The most optimum rig will be custom made.
Buteeehm, I’d use at least 2 bone layers. one where you see only the controls you need, and another one for the bones you don’t directly want to manipulate. If you don’t need to pose it, you don’t need to see it. If you want it to be optimal, you are gonna have a hard time not using them.
If you want a humanoid rig and don’t need much more than the ability to do some basic poses, just stick with hank/gus from the “bsod introduction to character animation” tutorial. And if you need more, start experimenting and building upon that.
And on a pimping out sidenote: I’m releasing a new rig soon that may not be as simple as you hoped for, but it’s quite light, versatile and shouldn’t be to hard for people to readjust to their own humanoid characters. Just remember to make all relevant bone layers visible wen you edit it 
And start off with a clean mesh. You need a clean mesh as much as you need good weight painting as you need a proper setup rig. An ugly mesh is gonna deform like a turd, bad weight painting will bork up a good mesh’s deformation, as will a lousy tuned rig.