Dan Attis has written down the steps to have Forms Based Authentication (FBA) for SharePoint while maintaining all of the bells and whistles.  Bells and whistles?  Things like My Site and My Links.  I think it's the most complete and detailed blog on the subject to date.

Part One is the basics.  It details how to get FBA working with a site in the first place.  But that doesn't give us My Site functionality which is as allusive as a good night sleep, whilst trying to figure it out.  Dan asked me to go through the steps in step one just to make sure there weren't any errors.  It was perfect.  I think it's a model example of what a tutorial should be like.  Afterwards, I begged him to help me get My Site working. I already had the basics and needed My Site to work.  I gave a talk a few months ago on FBA at our local users group.  I did all my modifications in the machine.config and that's a pretty bad idea.  Here's the slide deck for what I've done.  I strongly recommend Dan's approach

Part Two explains what you have to do to get MySite working.  While wrestling through it I discovered a new interface element that I hadn't seen before.  I couldn't figure out why I could get to my root site and why I could get to my ssp site, via FBA, but I couldn't get into My Site - or domain/MySite/.  I opened up the Site Collection Administrator trying to add my FBA account and checked and rechecked the site administrators for where my My Site resides.  Staring at the interface below I said to myself, "I wish there was a radio button on '/MySite' " and clicked on the words as I was deliriously talking to myself.  Viola, it highlighted in yellow.  I was able to then set the site collection administrators for MySite.  I was overwhelmed by a strange set of emotions I was happy that I could now get the focus on that particular site collection and at the same time I was a little worried that they had run out of radio buttons or didn't even have a spare drop down list in Redmond.  I know I don't like the new interface design, but I do know that I like the fact that I can get FBA works now. 

This approach should work with Adam's Universal Provider Framework as well, though neither of us has tried it.  I'd also like to recognize Nick Swan and his post on Forms Based Authentication for helping me several months ago in just getting the basics down.  I think Dan has done a great job in refining the instructions into very basic steps that produce 100% of the out of box experience and forms authentication.  Great Job Dan!

Well I say 100% there is a known issue with  SharePoint Designer and Forms Authentication.  Basically you either have to log in with IE first or just use your windows authentication site to make your changes.  The later of course would be preferred unless your designer is not part of your domain.  In which case you'll have to log in with IE first.  All of the office products will have this kind of functionality.  For whatever reason Microsoft didn't build in login functionality into any of their office client products.