Alphabetical sorting of terms (not using a view) I'm using the templates to display my terms rather than views but I'd like to change the order that the items are sorted. Currently it appears to be sorted by date. I would like to sort them alphabetically. Is this something I can do in the temeplate.php or within anywhere else?
The easiest way indeed is using views.

If you really don't like to do so, you could create a custom module, implement hook_menu_alter() to alter the page callback of the taxonomy page:

/**
 * Implements hook_menu_alter()
 */
function MYMODULE_menu_alter(&amp;$items) {
  if (isset($items['taxonomy/term/%taxonomy_term'])) {
    $items['taxonomy/term/%taxonomy_term']['page callback'] =&gt; 'MYMODULE_my_taxonomy_page';
  }
}


Then write your own version of the taxonomy module's function taxonomy_term_page($term) (using the above example, you would call it MYMODULE_my_taxonomy_page).

Within this function you can alter the call of taxonomy_select_nodes and add a fourth parameter, specifying the desired sort order:

$order = array('t.title' =&gt; 'ASC')


Note that this is working only, if you did not use a field replacement for the title property (e.g. using the title module). Then you would have to write an own version of the taxonomy_select_nodes function as well.