Localhost to Live Server issues

I’ve been developing my portfolio site locally on my machine using MAMP PRO. I had a slew of pages i created using templates in the admin tool, and even a post written and ready to go.

Once I was finished, I took my whole wordpress local file structure and uploaded it to my server via FTP. Then created a database, and what not… I was then prompted to install wordpress. and all the pages & posts that I created needed to be recreated. Not that huge of a deal, didn’t take that long…. BUT is there a way to avoid this in the future? I know having a local installation doesn’t really give you a wordpress account. Do I need to create one first, then do the local install?

Any help is appreciated ??