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[bucket]

When starting a fort, I figure your basic options are to

A) Have a hole in the ground that expands organically to fit your population's needs, or
B) Set up temporary lodgings while you work on your fortress proper.

Generally, I have B in mind, but it can be difficult with the new slower stone hauling. It can take over a year just to carve a dwarfworthy entrance hall (complete with moat) from the hillside, and by then my settlement is dozens strong. Do you have any strategies for managing your population while construction is going on?

[Sus]

Generally, I just use the future axdorf barracks near the entrance as an interim dorm until I get around to digging out some proper bedrooms. You don't need a lot of beds in a fledgling fort really, as the dorfs tend to work in shifts and take turns sleeping.

[Oaktree]

Dorm room in the soil layer that is later used for farm/pasture space.  Or possibly in the first stone layer being worked, but in any case put in a room that is later re-purposed once the residence halls and large dining hall are dug out. 

Early one I've even just stuck 5-6 beds along a hallway and designated them the dorm without it even being a "room" as such.  Since it's pretty much work, work, work, for the first dozen dwarves or so they're pretty much sacking out only when fatigue demands it.

[Azure]

Slap a dorm down somewhere and you're good to go. Place it wherever your future immigrant slums will be. Once they have value give them a room in the barracks billet, farmers quarters, hospital resort, Foundry spa, or whatever other burrow is their new home.

[PsychicKid]

I usually carve a decent length hallway into a hillside (or straight into the ground) then build 1 or 2 medium size rooms at the end or branching off. These two rooms usually become all-purpose food storage, dorms, and a few staple workshops as I start digging proper bedrooms, storage rooms, and workshop rooms. Once I have enough proper rooms made, the all-purpose rooms became "incoming-immigrant-housing" until I get their own rooms set up, farming if it's soil, or the primary military barracks (So they are close to the entrance) + trading depot.

[VerdantSF]

I use temporary lodging that is part of a set, final layout.  I have the first 10 levels of my fort in a single Quickfort blueprint.  Each floor is divided into multiple sections that are split off by non-designated rock.  I mine section by section, moving workshops and stockpiles when needed, starting new industries as their areas open up.  One of my first rooms is a dorm, though that becomes a storage area once the actual residential floor is mined out.   

[They Got Leader]

I cut my fortress into the rock and continue to expand as necessary. No temporary lodgings for me.

[Hammerstar]

I don't start grand projects immediately. i start with a simple 2-wide hallway which will later be expanded into a grand entrance hall, and move down several levels. Once deep enough, I carve out a food depot and rooms for the kitchen, brewery, mason's shop and capernter's shop. Mason starts making blocks from which the other buildings are made, and carpenter's starts churning out beds. Usually a full ten, to get slightly ahead. Meanwhile the miners carve out the initial seven bedrooms.

Once the bedrooms are dug, the miners move to a soil layer to make a farm area. If I brought egg layers with me, I carve out an area for them. Fairly large so I have room to expand. Next comes the dining room, and the mason starts making tables and chairs and doors (I usually have quite a bit of stone at this point). Around here is usually when the first wave of migrants arrive, and I start carving out more bedrooms, followed by depots for various industry goods and workshops.

Once everything is stable, THEN I start working on things like a grand entryway, and carving out a meandering side entry path that will be nicknamed "The Meat Grinder" for fairly obvious reasons and so on. Things go quicker if some of the migrants come with picks, since otherwise it won't be until after the metal industry is running that I can get more miners.

[ASnogarD]

I have a odd start to my Forts but it does offer some flexible starts...

Surface enterance is 5 wide ramp with a short passage with 2 largish rooms shooting off, one starts as a custom pile for funiture and good, the other is my trade depot , then there is another ramp down, then a long passage that ends in a large room.
This room is my stairway enterance to the rest of my fort that goes straight down.
When I finish digging out the 2 upper rooms and the big room I put down 5 beds against the walls of the big room, and 3 tables and chairs in the same half as the beds, the other half of the big room is food piles divided into food, seeds,booze .... in the middle of the big room is the 3x3 stairway.

Ultimately I make a keep around the surface enterance ramps, and then a large walled area around that for top defence and farms/pastures ... the long passage leading to the large room gets a hole dug in front of the room and a bridge affords the only access to the stairways, the room gets turned into a staging area with battlements and siege equipment.

The other odd thing I do is after I explored 10 - 12 levels down, I dont dig deeper unless I REALLY need the room area... I build a mine seperate to my fortress with a bridge access from the top of the outside defence walls to a mine building that houses the actual mine... that way if I disturb some fun, I can isolate my fort from my mine... well thats the idea, I never quiet get that far before something goes crazy in my fort and it because a chore of responding to urist mcmoody's demands, keeping soapmakers busy even though I dont have a soap industry and trying not to murder the hypocritical elves who try trade me half the worlds lumber in goods but go mental if I dare offer them rocks crafts neatly stored in wooden bins :p