How do ratings work on this site?

I just started out and I'm only playing bot games so far. It shows me as (800) but I'm consistently beating the 1200 rated bots. (Haven't tried any higher yet. I'm a newbie.) Do I have to play in tournaments or games against live players to start seeing a real rating?

Bots have overrated rating. If you wish to see your real rating you will have to play rated games against humans.

I think the meaning was, how do you get a rating on the site. I'm wondering this too.

I understand the bots could be overrated, but does.playing bots mean you won't get a rating in here?

You need to play rated games against people to get a rating. The system will allocate you a provisional rating for your first game (you might be able to set your provisional, I cant remember). Your rating adjustment for wins and losses depend on the difference between the player's ratings and how confident the system is that your rating is correct. This means that for your first few games you can expect large adjustments in rating. It settles down eventually. If you set your provisional too high, expect your rating to drop a large amount for your first few losses 😁.

Yes, playing bots will not get you rating points. Only by playing rated games against humans you will be able to gain or lose rating points. In the beginning your rating will fluctuate a lot but after several games, gain and loss of rating will be smaller. 

You can play blitz, rapid, bullet etc on live chess. 

https://www.chess.com/live

How long should I play bots before I try against a real human? I'm new and I have nightmares of completely humiliating myself! I learned to play when I was a kid, but have only been trying to get serious about it for a couple weeks.

I'm capable of losing games to human players under 300, but I just played one of the 1200 bots and this happened.

4 Queen's? That a glitch ?

Unfortunately, that feeling won't go away no matter how much time you spend playing the bots. My suggestion is to try to forget about the rating. It's just a device for finding opponents of your own strength so you get a good game. Just play, your rating will be whatever it will be. As you learn, study, and improve, the rating will follow.

I do seem to promote an awful lot of pawns playing against bots. It also seems like as soon as I get 4 or 5 ahead on material the bot games just fall apart.

I don't know much about AI, but I imagine it's easier to make a bot that can see 50 moves ahead than to make one that makes mistakes in the way a human would. It sounds easy enough to deny a 1200 bot the ability to see a brilliant move that a 3000 bot would see, but how does it know when to make a move against its own interests? Does it simply have a certain percentage likelihood of blundering on any given move?

I've noticed when analyzing a bot game the analyzer comments on mistakes made by the bot during play. Or rather, it comments on my move that followed the bot's mistake. That seems to imply that the engine does analysis to a grater depth than when it plays at a stated rating. Either that, or as you suggested, it may have some percentage chance of choosing an inferior move.

Start now. Being a beginner doesn't humiliate you at all. Note that bots and humans have different playing styles and playing bots does not prepare you well for playing against humans.

That sounds like good advice. The benefit I'm getting from bots is learning not to leave pieces hanging, and learning to count exchanges better. Those seem to be skills that are important in any case.

Humiliating yourself to whom? This site is anonymous and the player pool so vast that the chances of anyone giving a game with you a second thought no matter how poorly or well played is close to zero. 

Just go ahead and humiliate yourself. You'll get over it. Most people on here have hung their queen and blundered checkmate in 1 a gazillion times before getting good.

play against human and rating go up if you win, down if you lose.

No need to even bother playing the bots at all. Don't worry about humiliation, you will win or lose several games until you reach your actual rating, at which point you will stabilize and face people at your level no matter how good or bad you are. When facing much better players you may get steamrolled, but that's not humiliating, that's just how games work. Everyone looks bad when facing someone much better, no matter how good they are. You will face that person once and move on, and no one is really going to think much about it.  

Bots are there for the fun of it, don't use them to gauge your playing strength. Start playing some live games, hopefully rapid time control and enjoy. It can be tough when you first start out so don't get discouraged .