"Seven young kids go to camp for the summer
and wind up living in a digital land
where every kid gets to have their own digi-monster
a digital companion, a digital friend

A Digimon In-training can digivolve to Rookie
and digivolve to Champion and Ultimate too
I'm gonna save the digital world for me
I'm gonna save the digital world for you"

Those are some of the lyrics to the very inspiring song "Hey Digimon". ^_^. Serves as a nice basic introduction.

As the song said, Digimon is about seven (and later, eight) kids who are sucked into the Digital World - a world that is a physical representation of the computer data running through their own world. Each of the children finds themselves with a Digimon companion that stays with them and protects them through many adventures.

As the digital world and the real world are linked, the kids have to save the digital world from evil Digimon in order to save both worlds. In the process, the kids themselves grow as people while their Digimon become stronger.

Digimon is a show very loosely based off some Tamagotchi-like virtual pets, cheap-looking things that beep annoyingly and that you have to raise if you don't want them to squander in their own filth and digivolve into a Numemon or something. ^_-. You know the sort of thing I mean. The main connection between the virtual pet game and the show is that almost all of the Digimon on the show are from the game, and they can digivolve into stronger Digimon.

Digimon are digital monsters, a diverse race of creatures that have a few things in common:
They all have attributes - this means a type (data, virus or vaccine) that indicates whether they are good or evil, attacks and the ability to digivolve
They all come from Digi-eggs that are kept in Primary Village until they hatch
Their names all end in 'mon'
They are all physical representations of data running through the real world
When they die, they are reconfigured

There are six stages of Digimon, these stages indicate relative strength. First, the Digi-egg, which is an egg. Basically, it just sits there and waits to hatch. Very exciting. Then there is the Baby stage, where the Digimon doesn't have any attacks, it's helpless and fairly pathetic.

Then comes In-training, where every such Digimon has a generic attack "Bubble Blow". All wild Digimon that have been out of their eggs for long enough are at least In-training - after that, some digivolve further under certain circumstances, and others don't.

The next stage is Rookie, which is the stage that most of the kids' Digimon stay in most of the time, because they are cuter and also more smaller, more transportable. Individual attacks are developed at this stage. The next stage is Champion, then Ultimate, and finally Mega (sometimes called Mega Ultimate), which is the strongest there is (as far as we know).

The kids' Digimon are different from usual Digimon, as they can digivolve with the help of special "digivices", but as this is not a natural digivolution, they will dedigivolve after a while. They require energy to digivolve, and usually do so when their human charges are in trouble. Later, the kids acquire extra devices called tags and crests which help their Digimon to digivolve to Ultimate level. Mega is a bit more fiddly to reach.

That is the basic rundown of what you might need to know to understand this site. I guess if you want to know more you can check out the storyline page. ^_^.