[toivo]

- I went to Email Integration settings, from the vbull options tab, but no "Forum settings help" option existed. I use vbull. 3.8.4.

It is not in the options tab but at the bottom of the left pane.

"php /root/forum_read/forum_read.php" how will it know where to find my forum_read.php vbulletin cron file, which is in the vbulletin/includes/cron folder.

You do not need to copy the file into the includes/cron folder, it can stay in your home directory, but you need to modify the path in the 4 line shell script to point to your home directory, or omit the path and the current directory will be used by default.

When I add the forum_read.php cron to vbulletin, should it be added as a vbulletin product, or Email Integration product.

The forum_read.php script cannot be added to vBulletin as a product or plugin because it has to work independently of vBulletin, triggered by the scheduler of the operating system on the same or another server. I run it from another server, and if you run it from the web server, you may have to modify the script.