1. Order - As you should allow for up to 48 hours to have your bot set up and your activation password mailed to you, it makes sense to start with the purchase. You can buy Cynthia™ here. When filling out the order form, please make sure you enter an email address you have access to and the exact (sub-)domain where you're planning to put up your bot.


2. Download - Within minutes of your purchase, a download link will be sent to the address you specified in your order. When you click on the link, it will download a zip file which you should extract and upload to a directory called "cynthia" in the root of your webserver. It is important the directory is named "cynthia" and that it resides in the root.


3. Pick the brain - While you are waiting for your activation password to be sent to you, you should decide how you are going to manage your bot's Artificial Intelligence. You have 3 options:

- Pandorabots.com is a free online bot hosting service and arguably the easiest way to quickly create an engaging virtual personality. Simply sign up for an account and you will be guided through the rest of the process. Once you've set up a bot with them, come back here.

- Program E is an open source AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) interpreter written in PHP and requiring a MySQL database. Though somewhat harder to install and configure, it might turn out faster and more reliable than Pandorabots. Installation instructions are included in the download (in the /docs folder) and can be found in a more elaborated form here. As is pointed out there, the file named "flash.php" in the /src folder should be replaced in order for Program E to work well with Cynthia™.

- Program D is another open source AIML interpreter, written in Java this time. Without any doubt the fastest and most subtle of the three, it also takes the most skill (and besides that: shell access to your server) to get it up and running. Fortunately, the documentation is of the same high standards as the program itself.

Cynthia™ interfaces with all 3 AIML implementations and switches easily from one to another.


4. Paste the HTML - Now it's time to paste some html code in the page where you want to stage your bot. Something like this should do the trick:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" width="200" height="500" id="cynthia_bot"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="salign" value="top" /> <param name="movie" value="http://yoursite.com/cynthia/cynthia_bot.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="medium" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#fafafa" /> <embed src="http://yoursite.com/cynthia/cynthia_bot.swf" bgcolor="#fafafa" width="200" height="500" name="cynthia_bot" salign="top" quality="medium" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object>

Of course you need to replace yoursite.com with your domain name (you might or you might not have to add "www" in front). Feel free to change the other parameters to meet your site's design.


5. Connect the brain - Depending on which brain you chose for your bot - Pandorabots, Program E or Program D - you should fill out one of two parameters in cynthia.ini (=one of the files you uploaded to the /cynthia directory in the root of your webserver):

For Pandorabots, fill out botID with the botid of your Pandorabot (e.g. &botID=d4ed835bbe3595c0& ) and leave botURL blank.

For Program E, point botURL to the (modified) flash.php file (e.g. &botURL=http://yoursite.com/programe/src/flash.php& ) and don't fill out anything for botID.

For Program D, point botURL to port 2001 of the running Program D server and add "/?flash=yes" (e.g. &botURL=http://yourdomain.com:2001/?flash=yes& ). Leave botID blank.

Note 1: please don't ever use any whitespace within parameters in cynthia.ini and make sure to include every parameter between &-signs.

Note 2: if you're running Program E or Program D on a different (sub)domain than Cynthia, you should put a cross-domain policy file in the root of the Program E or Program D webserver.


6. Customize the looks - A word of warning before you proceed: if you don't want to spend hours figuring out why the changes you make don't apply, I recommend you deactivate your browser's cache.

Now let's surf to the page where you pasted the html code for your bot. If all is well, you should see Cynthia and you should be able to have a text chat with her (just plain text, no sound or lip sync at this stage). If you can't see Cynthia, either your html code is incorrect or you haven't uploaded all files to the appointed location (/cynthia folder in the root). If you can see her but can't chat, either there's something wrong with your AIML implementation or with your connection to it (botURL or botID). Or you need to clear your browser's cache (FireFox) or delete the Temporary Internet files (IE).

Once you have text chat, you can start customizing your bot. All customization takes place in cynthia.ini. One of the parameters you can change is "characterFile", which you can point to a new character file. For more details, please refer to the design parameters and the chat parameters.


7. Activate the mouth - Finally, your activation password has arrived and you're ready to hear and see your bot speak. Well, all that's left for you to do is fill out "pwd" in cynthia.ini with your password and surf to the page which holds your bot (I do hope your browser's cache is still turned off). Fine-tune by tweaking the voice parameters.


Once you're happy with how your bot looks and sounds, you can reactivate your browser's cache. If you have any issues, please post in the forum first. If you don't get an answer within a reasonable timespan, you can use the contact form.