Cleric is my favorite class in the game.
Don't ask why, but your necro-cleric should be corpulent and have a voracious appetite!
You can't go wrong with a cleric, and there are so many ways to play one, given the various faiths and domains available to choose from.
But if you're picky, maybe look at the rest of the party's composition to get an idea of how much healing you'll have to do, and when. If the party is short on front-liners (barbarians, paladins, fighters, etc) then you may be expected to do some tanking, too, and probably a good deal of healing. If the front line is composed of barbarians and rogues, you may be able to hang in the back a little more, but may need to do a lot more healing.
Or, if the rest of the party has a lot of secondary healers in it (bards, paladins, maybe even the right kind of inquisitor), then you can get away with a little less.
When you say you want to contribute in other ways (hey, healing is a huge contribution!), what do you have in mind? Combat, spells, or a little of both? Something else - maybe being the party face?
Pick a dual cursed oracle with the spell command and a bones oracle with command undead. So you can command living creatures and command undead with a channel. Then when you level you can summon an undead to fight for you.
Dual cursed can pick extra revelation and give misfortune as well forcing creature to reroll their saves against you.
An Undead summoning Cleric sounds like a fun class to me.
But you should never underestimate the power of a (assuming good) Cleric whose sole purpose is to kill/maim/destroy Evil and especially Undead.
We've got a Cleric in our game (Sarenrae) and he lays the hurt on Undead like nobody's business, not to mention that he can heal you and hurt Undead simultaneously with Positive channeling. Not too great against everything else, but Undead aren't exactly uncommon.
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I personally love cleric the most because not only is it main heals but it can also do decent damage. If going with a cleric i strongly advise u be neutral and serve a neutral god so u can pick up the Versatile Channeler feat. That feat will allow u to channel both positive and negative energy. Also get Guided Hand and its prerequisite Channel Smite asap. Guided Hand makes it were u use ur wis to hit instead of ur str or dex for ur god's favored weapon. Channel Smite is sadly though a crapy feat unless u combine it with the Vital Strike feats and a weapon with spell storing harm or any of the inflict spells.
1 other class to take in2 consideration is Witch btw. A good witch build will debuff enemies and heal. also when starting off the Slumber hex is basically a 1 hit death sentence.
Since this is your first character, I would recommend keeping it simple. And simple in this case is Cleric. Channel Positive Energy, spontaneously cast cure spells, and can armor up fairly well. Put some points in strength and you can tank fairly well. Don't pass on Paladin, though if you can get away with using undead, your party probably isn't the type for a Paladin anyway.
I would rely more on using summoned monsters than undead since it's simpler, but if you can handle it, go for it. For summoning, take Spell Focus: Conjuration, and Augment Summoning to improve your monsters. Follow others' advice on undead, I'm not too familiar with using them.
Hospitaler Paladins can be a good balance between healing and fighting too.