The key to roasting a good chicken is to treat the chicken right before, during and after cooking.
Before cooking, rinse the chicken well with cold water. Pat dry with paper towels, or use a cloth towel that goes straight to the laundry. In the interior cavity, apply seasonings liberally, rubbing them in -- salt, black pepper, crushed garlic, perhaps some fresh herbs; almost any would be good (although not necessarily in any combination). Rosemary is one of my favorites. Be cautious with fresh sage; too much imparts what I consider and unpleasent muskiness.
You may wish to put some aromatics into the cavity as well: Garlic cloves; carrot, onion and celery; lemon and orange halves. Season the outside of the chicken. Make sure that you rub the spices into the skin under the breast.
Some books recommend rubbing the chicken all over with softened butter. I say not necessary, although it won't hurt anything (excluding health concerns, of course).
Now, an important part: Truss the chicken. A properly trussed chicken roasts evenly throughout, and makes a compact form better for carving. Lay the chicken on it's back, breast up, cavity facing you. Take about five feet of plain string and hold an end in each hand. Put the middle of the string across the neck cavity, and bring the ends around the sides, securing the wings, and crossing over the abdominal cavity. Loop around the legs and draw these together. Come back up around the sides, and tie tightly above the neck cavity. The main point is to bring the wings in close to be body, and the legs up close and covering the larger opening.
I'll discuss sanitation and chicken later, but once the chicken is in the oven, clean up. Wipe down any surfaces that might have been touched by the raw chicken, or your hands after touching raw chicken, with a mild bleach solution. Wash your hands with anti-bacterial soup, and wash and disinfect your tools and cutting board.
Chickens don't need much in the way of special attention while cooking. Put it on a rack in a roasting pan, preferably a pan not much bigger on the sides than the chicken itself. Too big, and the juices will burn up and dry out, instead of accumulating on the bottom. Set it in the middle of a moderate oven (around 350°).
Frequent basting is not needed -- just do it every twenty minutes or so, and only after the first half hour. Just baste with whatever drizzles down into the pan, no need to use broth or melted butter. I don't think a chicken should be cooked breast down for any part of the cooking time, but people have different ideas on this.
The most important thing to do when cooking a chicken is to take it out at the right time. There has been much attention paid recently to harmful micro-organisms present in some foods: In particular, samonella and e.coli. Chicken is so often contaminated with salmonella that you should always presume it is present. Never serve undercooked chicken.
At the same time, you don't want to cook overcooked chicken. Therefore, you need a thermometer. Preferablly, you need an instant-read thermometer that you can stick into the meatiest part of the thigh, not touching bone or inserted in fat, to take a reading.
To be sure salmonella is killed, by the time you serve, the coolest part of the chicken (that place in the thigh) should have reached a temperature no less than 168°. If the thigh is 168° or 170°, then the breast portion will be 10° - 15° higher. Take the temperature and see.
Check the temperature as the chicken nears doneness. Also, check the color of any juices running from the cavity -- they should be clear, with no pink. You can't wiggle a wing or drumstick for looseness if they're tied down, but that's a good clue, too. In short: When the temperature in the meaty part of the thigh hits about 165°, remove the chicken from the heat.
Tent it loosely with foil and let it "set up" outside the oven for about 15 minutes. During this time the juices will begin to settle back into meat, so your slices and pieces of chicken will be juicier than otherwise. Also, you will finish cooking the chicken, as the heat in the body of the fowl won't all dissipate the second it comes from the oven. Note: This period of post oven cooking will occur whether you set the chicken up or not. After a few minutes the temperature in the bird may have risen 10°. So if you pull the chicken at 170, you'll serve it at 180. It's a much better plan to pull it at 160 and serve it at 170.
If you want gravy, now is certainly the time to make it. The key to gravy is three steps: Caramelize, degrease, and deglaze. Remove the chicken to a warm platter (with the "tent" of foil in place) and put your roasting pan onto a burner. Over low heat cook and stir the pan drippings until any liquid is evaporated the and color becomes a rich caramel. Pour off the oil into a measuring cup, leaving as much of the caramelized bits as possible. Add your liquid -- chicken stock, giblet broth, even water -- and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping the pan to dissolve any deposits.
At this point, I like to switch to a different pan. For each cup of broth you are heating, heat one tablespoon of the reserved drippings in a clean saucepot. When hot, for each tablespoon of drippings, add one tablespoon of flour. Stir until flour begins to change color. For each tablespoon of drippings, add one cup of broth. (I must confess I don't measure drippings, flour, etc; instead I do it by eye. However, these proportions will work well). Whisk and stir until boiling. Check seasoning -- I think the flavoring of a pan gravy should be intense. Season with salt and white pepper. Strain if desired.
(Cream gravy is a little different. Deglaze the roasting pan with a very small amount of water, and heat the milk seperately. Don't let it boil, but add it hot to the roux. Add the drippings-enriched water to the gravy as it thickens.)
Carving at the table is elegant, but with a small chicken at an informal supper, it's much faster to dismember the bird at the counter. Just slide a sharp knife between the thigh joint and the back for both legs. Then run the knife down the keel bone -- the ridge in the middle of the breast -- and carefully work the cooked breast meat away from the bone. Finish this cut by removing the wing from the back at the shoulder joint. An average size bird (not a roasting chicken) will give up four nice servings that way: Two legs, and two breast/wing pieces.