Developing Client Sites and your Workflow

[cykopat]

I'm interested in seeing how you design your clients sites even before they have their domain. For example if they have their domain I've been installing WP and customizing their site under a /site/ folder and now rather than go in an try to manually move everything I just redirect their www landing to /site/.

However, I was wondering what people have found as the best way to setup client sites with photos, copy, etc and when it's ready to go live. What are the steps to ensure that everything goes smooth? (Thought: now that I type this I suppose I could EXPORT all from WordPress) and just make sure the client domain has all the same genesis, child, plugins and then import. Not sure how that works with widgets)

I used to do client.mydesigncompany.com.