We are trying to streamline the process of showing clients their websites whilst in development without the need to change absolute paths etc.
We mostly develop locally and change our hosts files to reflect the domain name, when we are ready to show the client we copy the files to www.client.com/dev but I'm looking for a better method, any suggestions that can make this process smoother and faster would be great.
Well, we have client.t.uw.ru site which is universally visible.
When it matures, it moves onto www.client.com and is pushed to search engines.
Thus, we have a * DNS entry on t.uw.ru domain which makes it easy.
If you always host the site on a separate domain and not in a subdirectory, you will never have to change absolute paths. So instead of hosting a site in development at www.client.com/dev try dev.client.com. Another option would be to use client.yourcompany.com.
Also try to protect the site in development with HTTP basic authentication. This is easy to set up in most web servers, without changing your web application. Also, if the content is even remotely sensitive in any way, use HTTPS as well.
Alternatively, let them simply come over to your office and present it to them (or go to them and present it). The upside is that you have full control over what they will and won't see, and it never has to go online.