A court order issued Wednesday ordered Turkey's telecommunications authority to restore access to Twitter. But even before the temporary injunction, Turkish residents have been finding ways to circumvent it and continue to tweet.

The telecommunications authority confirmed last Friday that it had blocked access to the social networking site. The ban was ordered by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of municipal elections scheduled for later this month.

Erdogan, who had previously threatened to "rip out the roots" of the website, said he ordered the ban because Twitter was not obeying the country's laws. His remarks came after links to recordings surfaced on Twitter suggesting government corruption.

After Erdogan’s order, Turkish residents attempting to access Twitter were instead redirected to webpages stating that the website had been blocked. But Turkish residents still found ways to tweet, and it didn't take long before #Twitterisblockedinturkey started to trend.

Here's a look at some of the ways residents were able to get around the ban:

Changing domain name system settings

At first, users were able to still access Twitter by changing their domain name system (DNS) settings.

DNS settings help take a domain name (like Twitter.com), and translate it into a numeric IP address. By altering the DNS settings, Turkish Internet providers redirected people inside the country who were trying to access Twitter to a webpage explaining that the site had been blocked instead.

However, residents quickly discovered how to avoid being redirected, by manually changing their own DNS settings.

Soon, people began circulating the IP addresses for the .

But eventually Turkey began blocking these as well.

Virtual Private Networks

Many Turkish residents are using free, virtual private network apps to access Twitter. VPNs allow users to mask their own IP address, which identifies their location, and use the IP address of the network instead. This in turn allows users to continue to access websites that are restricted in their own countries.

In the hours after the ban took effect, Twitter users downloaded apps like and , which allowed them to continue tweeting.

Both companies acknowledged the surge in downloads on Twitter:

Spray-painted 'murals'

While the technical instructions on how to bypass the Twitter block were quickly circulated online, Turkish residents also used low-tech means of spreading the news.

Across Turkey, people scrawled ways of bypassing the block across election posters and city walls by posting the DNS settings residents could use to still access Twitter.

On Wednesday, Turkey's deputy prime minister said the telecommunications authority would obey the court order to restore Twitter access when it received an official notice. But he said the government reserved the right to appeal the decision.

With files from The Associated Press