Split hosting services between two providers?

[sakpgu]

Hello:

--Newbie here who needs advice on the best way to spilt hosting services between two providers.

--The family firm I work for wants a well-known ISP to host the domain name & provide Internet access.

--A freelance web designer, who is a relative of the owners, wants to host the website and act as a backup to our local Exchange server. (Mind you, I prefer a single hosting service but must investigate this for obvious reasons.)

--How do I redirect Website traffic from the ISP to the web hosting server? I know how to redirect MX records from the ISP to our local Exchange server.

--Thanks in advance for any and all advice. I'm rather new to IT & want to make sure it's done right.
Patrick

 

[lgarner]

It's not redirection, you just a DNS entry for the web site.

www IN A <freelancer.ip.address>

 

[sakpgu]

--Thanks a lot. I knew it was something obvious, but my brain defaulted to Homer Simpson mode.

 

[cleggers]

We are currently in a mess as the server platform (Demon)hosting our website has been down for nearly 5 days (lost business etc).
In order to prevent this happening again we need some kind of contingency plan.
Demon also host our domain.
Can anyone tell me how we can get our website back up online in such circumstances.