How does bitly work?

[StealthPolarBear]

How does it give you a shorter URL instantly that goes to the same page with no process of registration or storing?

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there must be some sort of encryption going g on

No, its pretty simple, it just acts as a giant redirectint spreadsheet - you enter www.youknowwhatyouwant.com and it spits out bit.ly/je.

If you enter the same website at a different time it just spits out a new bit.ly

However it is used alot by scammers to hide their original website identity so some people won't click them.

Yes but surely the redirection has to be registered somewhere? Else how does www.bit.xom/32111 get redirected to www.Mumsnet.com or whatever

As far as i know its not an actual redirect, you can still go to mumsnet through the normal weblink - think of it like a hyperlink for websites.

Sorry that still doesn't help. If I create a bitly link here then if you type it in you will get to the website I intend you to. Even though I've (as far as I can tell) not officially registered them being one and the same.
I could understand it if bitly maintained a register of these and propagated them through the web so the bitly links were resolved into the new website but that doesn't seem to be what's happening as it takes no time to work and also no time to generate the link - it seems to happen on the client without refreshing the bitly Web page!

Apologies for being dim but id really like to understand this :)

I'm confused by your confusion. It's just creating a link to the page you want it to link to. It's not changing the URL for the original page.

Well my understanding is that urls are just ip addresses - direct addresses of computers on tbe Internet, eg 111.222.333.3. To have a nicer URL such as www.stealthpolarbear.com you need to register the URL and it in order for it to resolve to the ip it needs to 'trickle through' the Internet. You can set up sub folders on that URL easily enough but entire new urls always need to do the 'trickle'.

It's no good me creating a hyperlink unless I tell everyone (or the Internet - dns servers??) What it points to!

But it's just a link and not a new URL? It's a link via bitly.

Bitly is pointing everything in the right direction.

Ah...ok think o get it now. So if the bitly server goes down they wouldn't work. Bitly resolve them internally?

With you thanks :o

So they must maintain a list of bitly URL | actual URL. I thibk that's what confused me. When I used it the bitly URL seemed to come up without any page refresh as though it hadn't gone to the server at all. Must have done I suppose.