Ok a quick question here.

The web hosting company for our church is about to go under (illness). I have all the webfiles backed up and am ready to shift to dreamhost - probably today.

If the other site goes down in the 24-72 hr transfer period, does that mean we have no web presence during that time?

What about email?

Our registrant and webhost are 2 different companies. Our registration is locked (donated to us) and we don't want to shift that - just the website.

I am reading the wiki's from dreamhost but am a bit confused... any suggestions on how to do this as painlessly as possible?