Hi all, my site has outgrown the shared hosting account it's on and i've setup a VPS that i'll be moving to soon. I cannot keep the same IP between my new account and the old one and I'm a bit at loss as to how to minimize user downtime while the new IP is reflected in all DNS caches. Note I cannot have the site running on both accounts at the same time as it's a dating site and this would cause data inconsistency.

Here's what i am planning to do :

1. Put up a 'under maintenance' page on old host
2. Get the site up and running on new host, and update domain to point to new host.
3. Hope downtime isn't too long.

Would it be a good idea to have a link on the page in (1) that opens the new site but using it's ip ? Or even redirect all requests at the old host, to the new one (again by ip) ?

Any advice much appreciated.