i have a field called important, and it should list any rows that contain the important tag first so i have it setup to select important, but then i want it to list any topics that dont have important, how can i do this?

important!=1
!important
important=0

none of those work, so i dont what to do next.

how do you do this, i cannot seem to find it through google either.

this is in the mysql_query(); too if that wanst implied

Just give 2-3 lines of your php code containing the specific part so that we'll understand your question better.

You can ORDER BY any value, including, if so inclined, constants and boolean equations. You probably want something like

ORDER BY important = 1, itemID LIMIT x

Note that this requires pulling the full select result to sort it, so make sure your WHERE clauses reduce the result set to something sane.

well i am already ordering by time, can i order by both? important first, then time?

Yes.
ORDER BY col1 DESC, col2;
would order by col1 in descending order, then order by col2.

thanks, got it working with that