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Installation tips
If you don't see any "plugins" listed in the "plugins" page of the configuration dialog after installing Kopete you may have installed it in a directory where KDE doesn't look for additional resources like plugins.
KDE applications by default look in all directories listed in the /etc/kderc file, the $KDEDIRS environment variable, in $KDEDIR if this variable doesn't exist, and ultimately in the directory where kdelibs is installed. Unless you take special precautions applications will _NOT_ look in other directories, even if you install additional software (like Kopete) there.
The best solution is to add the following to /etc/kderc (create the file if it doesn't exist yet):

[Directories]
prefixes=/the/prefix/I/used/for/kopete


If you don't have write access to /etc/kderc, or if you want to use more parallel builds of KDE and/or Kopete you need to rely on the environment variables instead. If $KDEDIRS currently points to /opt/kde3 and you installed Kopete to /usr/local then you need to set $KDEDIRS to '/opt/kde3:/usr/local'. You need to store this change in a file that is picked up by all shells and for all users, like /etc/profile. The name of the preferred version varies from system to system. After changing /etc/kderc or $KDEDIRS you'll have to update your system settings with 'kbuildsycoca'.
*Remember, Kopete only works with KDE 3.1.1 or above!