changeing sort order

is there a way to change the sort order for all of the products on my web store.

Could you be a tad more vague ... :cool:

"Where" are you trying to change the Sort Order? There are settings for the:
Product Info
Product Listing
New Listing
Featured Listing
All Listing

products

You were most helpful to add more details so that we can better answer your question ... :rolleyes:

As products are all over the Catalog ... perhaps you can look all over the Admin at the areas I listed and set the Sort Orders until the area of products that you mean has been sorted ... :smile:

OK my client wants me to set it up so all the products in all the categories of the web store..

You want to set it up that all the products in all the categories ... do what?

Could you please type in some detail as to what you want to do? So far you haven't said anything for us to have a clue as to where you are having problems with the Sort Order ...

I gave you a list for most all of the Sort Orders ... have you set all of those?

What have you not been able to sort? Maybe an URL to where on your site you are when the Sort Order is not what you want would help and if you could specifically say what Sort Order you do want ...

OK this is the last time i'm going to say this. i want all the products in all the category to have the same sort number of 188. there are over 500 products and i don't want to change them all individually. is there a way to change all of the products sort order to 188.

The default is 0 I am not sure why you would want 188 ...

To reset back to the default of 0 use:

UPDATE products SET products_sort_order=0;

otherwise change it to whatever it is that you want ...

NOTE: this is the first time you have even begun to explain what you wanted ...

I could of told you this right from the start if you had given a clue as to what you wanted to do with the Sort Orders, as this was not even on the list of possibilities based on any of your posts ...

where would i find find the place to put in that php code

That needs to be run on the database ...

Either use phpMyAdmin or use the Tools ... Install SQL Patches ...

NOTE: you should backup your database before making changes like this ...