Is there a way to choose the order of how portfolio items are displayed on a portfolio archive page?

Many thanks for your help.

Thanks for writing in,

Can you try adding this code below and see how it works

function cmk_custom_order( $wp_query ) {
     /* Get the post type from the query*/
    $post_type = $wp_query->query['post_type'];
    /*If Post type is Portfolio*/
    if ( $post_type == 'x-portfolio') {
    /* Set Order to Random*/
	$wp_query->set('orderby', 'rand');
    /* un-comment if not using random order */
    //$wp_query->set('order', 'DESC');
    }
}
/* Change Order settings before displaying the Postype*/
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'cmk_custom_order');

I set the order to random so you’ll see right away if the code is working, just reload the page few times and if its working, the very first post should change every refresh

For the list of all order option please check WP Query order paramater http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Order_.26_Orderby_Parameters

Hers is a link to the page in question:
http://rightanglecreative.co.uk/portfolio/

I have looked at the link you provided regarding the various ways of ordering and the following two were of particular interest:

1 – ‘meta_value’ – Note that a ‘meta_key=keyname’ must also be present in the query. Note also that the sorting will be alphabetical which is fine for strings (i.e. words), but can be unexpected for numbers (e.g. 1, 3, 34, 4, 56, 6, etc, rather than 1, 3, 4, 6, 34, 56 as you might naturally expect). Use ‘meta_value_num’ instead for numeric values.
2 – ‘meta_value_num’ – Order by numeric meta value (available with Version 2.8). Also note that a ‘meta_key=keyname’ must also be present in the query. This value allows for numerical sorting as noted above in ‘meta_value’.

If I wanted to order the portfolio items by a custom order to be visually best, would I assign one of the above to each post and then order as I wish? For example, 1 will be visual merchandising manual, 2 will be water bottles and so on…

If this is the case, how do I assign these orders to each post?

Thank you very much for your time and help.

What are the steps to be able to do this without rebuilding all the portfolio pages from scratch?

There’s no option for that currently so template modification is necessary. But, we have listed this in our feature request list and might include additional Portfolio sorting options in a future release.

Thanks.

Have a great day

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Thanks!