[TYPO3] How to use a development site?

[Sascha Mantscheff]

For development purposes I have a typo3 installation, and what will 
eventually become a live site on another server. Each new feature and 
extension I first install, develop and test on the development system 
and then transfer it to the live site. Also the content is maintained on 
the development machine, mainly because of performance aspects.

Now there are minor differences between the installations, e.g. the 
baseURL configuration parameter. Therefore I cannot just copy the whole 
database content - either I copy it selectively or I manually have to 
re-enter the differing parameters and settings. Both is error-prone.

To make things worse, I do not have shell access to the live system, 
only FTP, so I cannot install a diff and patch mechanism on the the 
target system.

How do you proceed in similar situations?