There are countless sites out there that you can adopt things from, but for this tutorial I'm going to be using the adoptables that I have available on my personal site... if you have a favourite adoptables site, feel free to use that instead though!  :o)

OK, first things first.  What the frig are adoptables!!  Well, the best way to explain it, I guess, is to use an example which will hopefully make things a bit clearer for you  :o)

Sooo, for this example, let's say that one of your RL friends is having a birthday soon... what do you do?  You buy them a gift to say "happy birthday".  That's exactly what adoptables are... they are things that you take from someone's site to give to someone else as a giftie.

Different sites have different rules, but the 2 rules that most sites will have is that you save the gift to your own server (you don't "remote link") and that you link the gift back to their site.  Even if they don't have those rules written out on their site, it's only polite to abide by these 2 rules anyway!  :o)

So, why are these 2 rules there?  Well, let's take them in turn.  

The "no remote linking - please save to your own server" rule is there for 2 main reasons.  The first is that everything on a site uses up something called bandwidth each time the page (or anything on the page) is loaded up.  If the owner of the site has bought some space to put their site on, bandwidth can be very expensive and if you link directly to something on their site without saving it to your own server, every time someone looks at whatever you've linked to, you are using up someone else's bandwidth which they have had to pay for and bandwidth can be really expensive!!

The second reason this rule is there, is because if the owner of a site is using a free webhost (like Geocities or Bravepages or Topcities etc) then it's the web hosts that won't let you remote link to the graphics and if you do, then the image you link to will just show up as a red cross or it'll come up saying something like "this person has stolen this graphic"... now I don't know about you, but I don't fancy having a message like that on my site!!

Now let's move on to the 2nd rule - the "please link back to me!" rule.  This rule is there so that if someone sees the gift you've adopted and they like it, they can go to the site you got the gift from and pick up a gift for someone they care about too!  It's just the polite thing to do y'know?  If a friend comes up to you and goes "Ooh!  Nice top!  where did you get it from?" the polite thing to do is answer their question and let them know which shop you got your top from so that they can go and get one too... it's exactly the same with adoptables online!  :o)

The biggest thing to remember is that there is hours and hours of work that goes in to each and every adoptable and the owner of the site is letting you use their hard work, time and effort for free.  All they are asking for in return is that you abide by their rules (which are usually very reasonable).  There may be some sites out there where you don't agree with their rules (for whatever reason)... if you come across a site like that then the best thing to do is to just go to a different site - don't risk breaking the rules of the site!!  :o)

So, now we all know about the 2 most common rules, let's get on with learning how to do the fun part - adopting gifts!!