Ok, so you've decided to try out Supybot.  That's great!  The more
people who use Supybot, the more people can submit bugs and help us to
make it the best IRC bot in the world :)

First things first.  You should have already read through INSTALL
before reading any further.

Ok, so let's assume your bot connected to the server fine and joined
the channels you told it to join.  For now we'll assume you named your
bot "supybot" (you probably didn't, but it'll make it much clearer in
the examples that follow to assume that you did).  We'll also assume
that you told it to join #channel (a nice generic name for a channel,
isn't it? :))  So what do you do with this bot that you just made to
join your channel?  Try this in the channel:

supybot: list

Replacing "supybot" with the actual name you picked for your bot, of
course.  Your bot should reply with a list of the plugins he currently
has loaded.  At least Admin, Channel, Config, Misc, Owner, and User
should be there; if you used supybot-wizard to create your
configuration file you may have many more plugins loaded.  The list
command can also be used to list the commands in a given plugin:

supybot: list Misc

Will list all the commands in the Misc plugin.  If you want to see the
help for any command, just use the help command:

supybot: help help
supybot: help list
supybot: help load

Sometimes more than one plugin will have a given command; for
instance, the "list" command exists in both the Misc and Config
plugins (both loaded by default).  List, in this case, defaults to the
Misc plugin, but you may want to get the help for the list command in
the Config plugin.  In that case, you'll want to give your command
like this:

supybot: help config list

Anytime your bot tells you that a given command is defined in several
plugins, you'll want to use this syntax ("plugin command") to
disambiguate which plugin's command you wish to call.  For instance,
if you wanted to call the Config plugin's list command, then you'd
need to say:

supybot: config list

Rather than just "list".

Now that you know how to deal with plugins having commands with the
same name, let's take a look at loading other plugins.  If you didn't
use supybot-wizard, though, you might do well to try it before playing
around with loading plugins yourself: each plugin has its own
configure function that the wizard uses to setup the appropriate
registry entries if the plugin requires any.

Now, if you do want to play around with loading plugins, you're going
to need to have the owner capability.  If you ran the wizard, then
chances are you already added an owner user for yourself.  If not,
however, you can add one via the handy-dandy supybot-adduser script.
You'll want to run it while the bot is not running (otherwise it could
overwrite supybot-adduser's changes to your user database before you
get a chance to reload them).  Just follow the prompts, and when it
asks if you want to give the user any capabilities, say yes and then
give yourself the "owner" capability (without the quotes), restart the
bot and you'll be ready to load some plugins!

Now, in order for the bot to recognize you as your owner user, you'll
have to identify with the bot.  Open up a query window in your irc
client (/query should do it; if not, just know that you can't identify
in a channel because it requires sending your password to the bot).
Then type this:

help identify

And follow the instructions; the command you send will probably look
like this, with your owner user and password replaced:

identify myowneruser myuserpassword

The bot will tell you that "The operation succeeded" if you got the
right name and password.  Now that you're identified, you can do
anything that requires any privilege: that includes all the commands
in the Owner and Admin plugins, which you may want to take a look at
(using the list and help commands, of course).  One command in
particular that you might want to use (it's from the User plugin) is
the addhostmask command: it lets you add a hostmask to your user
record so the bot recognizes you by your hostmask instead of requiring
you to always identify with it before it recognizes you.  Use the help
command to see how this command works.  Here's how I often use it:

addhostmask myuser [hostmask] mypassword

You may not have seen that "[hostmask]" syntax before.  Supybot allows
nested commands, which means that any command's output can be nested
as an argument to another command.  The hostmask command from the Misc
plugin returns the hostmask of a given nick, but if given no
arguments, it returns the hostmask of the person giving the command.
So the command above adds the hostmask I'm currently using to my
user's list of recognized hostmasks.  I'm only required to give
mypassword if I'm not already identified with the bot.

Now, with all that out of the way, we can continue telling you how to
load plugins :)  Remember earlier when I told you to try "help
load"?  That's the very command you'll be using.  Basically, if you
want to load, say, the Fun plugin, then "load Fun".  Simple, right?
If you need a list of the plugins you can load, you'll have to either
list the directory the plugins are in, or you'll have to check our
website -- look for the "Plugin index."

Another command you might find yourself needing somewhat often is the
"more" command.  The IRC protocol limits messages to 512 bytes, 60 or
so of which must be devoted to some bookkeeping.  Sometimes, however,
Supybot wants to send a message that's longer than that.  What it
does, then, is break it into "chunks" and send the first one,
following it with "(X more messages)" where X is how many more chunks
there are.  To get to these chunks, use the more command.  One way to
try is to look at the default value of
supybot.replies.genericNoCapability -- it's so long that it'll
stretch across two messages.

        <jemfinch|lambda> $config default
	                  supybot.replies.genericNoCapability
	<lambdaman> jemfinch|lambda: You're missing some capability
	            you need. This could be because you actually
	            possess the anti-capability for the capability
	            that's required of you, or because the channel
	            provides that anti-capability by default, or
	            because the global capabilities include that
	            anti-capability. Or, it could be because the
	            channel or the global defaultAllow is set to
	            False, meaning (1 more message)
	<jemfinch|lambda> $more
	<lambdaman> jemfinch|lambda: that no commands are allowed
	            unless explicitly in your capabilities. Either
	            way, you can't do what you want to do.

You should now have a solid foundation for using Supybot.  Be sure to
check the help that is built-in to the bot itself if you have any
questions, and enjoy using Supybot!