Here is a document describing git best practices which has been liked by some of the most knowledgeable git users out there.

Commit Often, Perfect Later, Publish Once: Git Best Practices https://gist.github.com/1540906

For large projects, there is git-flow: https://www.google.com/search?q=git-flow

I remember someone posting a recommended workflow for smaller projects, but I don't remember what it was called.

github uses a different flow. This article mentions the issues with git-flow and describes the flow used at github:

http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html