Best practices for planning My Sites

When you plan and set up My Sites, you should always follow Microsoft's best practices as given below :

1. Dedicated Web Application : You should use a dedicated web application for hosting My Site host site collection for following reasons:
• To improve performance and manageability.
• As enabling self-service site creation feature on a web application makes them vulnerable for cross-site scripting, it is required to isolate any scripts running in My Site from affecting other sites in your environment (see more details).
   
2. My Site host at Web Application Root : My Site host should exist at the Web application root unless it's a requirement to create it deeper in the path.
         Note : Without this, you will get an error message saying that no site collection exists when enabling self-site creation for web application. If there is a requirement of creating My Site host deeper in the path, it must be under an explicit inclusion managed path. Additonally, you must create a site collection at the Web application root, although this site collection can be empty and created without a template.
     
3. User's 'My Content Section' Naming Format : While setting up My Site, in the 'Site Naming Format' avoid choosing 'User name (do not resolve conflicts) option if you are not sure about the uniqueness of the user account (in multiple domains). This format is used to create a site collection for user when he/she first time clicks 'My Content' section of My Site.
      
4. Plan for Profile Syncronization : Although configuring the User Profile service application is required for My Sites, synchronizing profiles between SharePoint Server 2010 and directory services or business applications is optional. This option is highly recommended for consistent and timely information on user's My Site.
      
5. Configure Managed Metadata service application : The Managed Metadata service application enables Web applications to store and access keywords from a managed metadata term database.
   For My Sites, this functionality is required for users to specify keywords as their areas of expertise in the Ask Me About section and to use keywords for social tagging by using the Tags and Notes and I Like It features on the My Profile page of a My Site.
   A Managed Metadata service application is highly recommended for My Sites.  

For more details, visit this link.