I havent tried it as a solution to these issues, since I long-ago
split customize out into a separate file that is loaded manually
at a specific place in my .emacs file, but it seems that John
Wiegleys use-package package might address this issue more generally,
by deferring the relevant config steps programmatically. This would
be new infrastructure that new users could use in place of the
existing snippets that they place in their init files (presumably
from the web, email, friends, etc).
The project right now is hosted on github, which (IIRC) can be read
without an account and without allowing javascript.
I recall that some people in this thread use use-package, so perhaps
they can shoot down this idea or suggest ways to make it useful.