Customizing MySite -- not for the faint of heart

I'm not going to get too in-depth here because, to be honest, there are some decent guides out there already (or at least one).  My problem was finding them, rummaging through all the BS only to find that the solution won't fit my scenario.  My scenario is/was enterprise based so I needed to have the ability to deploy to a farm.  Some other caveats of my situation:

1. *Should* be supported.
2. Already has a feature and stapler feature from a previous developer.(these are needed to hook into the MySite creation process).  Source code no where to be found.
3. Custom webparts, custom master page, and custom CSS need to be deployed alongside.  Custom images and some compiled Silverlight also need to be deployed. I'm banking on fact that the .XAP file can just be copied over via the feature.  This is still waiting to be tested.

Now for the good part.  First your going to want to start with this blog post by Steve Peschka:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/22/customizing-moss-2007-my-sites-within-the-enterprise.aspx



This outlines the procedure to do the customizations.  Its fairly complicated and being a reasonably smart person myself... I got lost along the way and was not able to complete it in one sitting.  This of course frustrates me, being the prideful person I am :)

So today I came across a Visual Studio solution to help accomplish this: http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2824

The links from Steve's blog didn't seem to be working, so I was lucky to come across that link through another blog.  Thats a VS2005 solution but it converts nicely if you use 2008.  All in all, that is a great place to get started, and will help you visualize what Steve is talking about on his blog (and of course, because he made the project on Codeplex too).  If will also save you some time too, if you have deadlines and don't want to decipher everything from the ground up.