transferring a wordpress theme to a host w/previewdns?

[emusicmotion]

Hi I just finished building my church theme site and am ready to transfer it over to the other domain where it will be hosted.

I wanted to have it obscure from the public initially while I work on the URL path changes/test the site and I have a previewdns.com to do so - but one of the reps fr godaddy said this is not a good idea as wordpress doesn't import well if at all unless you're sending it to the domain.

I did notice that the import got hung up.

What is the proper way to transfer the site over? In other words, do I install the church theme from a zip file like last and then transfer the modified php files and images etc? oh - and will I lose all the plugin settings if I have to reinstall again?