This is the config I commonly use for MySQL, basically everything is UTF8 by default, there is a 16MB query cache and (in some ways most importantly) the minimum word length for full text searches is set to three. I think it must be because I am always searching for TLAs, can't stand for MySQL to ignore these.

[mysqld]
max_connections = 300
set-variable=local-infile=0
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1
#character-set-server=utf8
default-character-set=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake
query_cache_type=1
query_cache_size=16777216
ft_min_word_len=3
   
[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib
[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

[client]
#character-set-client=utf8
default-character-set=utf8