In Magento Vanilla installation the products are sorted based on “Position” on the product listing page by default. You have the provision to configure the default sorting parameter from Magento admin. In Magento Vanilla installation admin the options available are – “Best Value”, “Name” and “Price”. “Best Value” sorting is actually sorting by position.

“name” and “price” are catalog attributes but “position” is not.

If in case you need to remove sorting by position then you will have to override the Catalog module model but if just you need to change the text then you can do it with the help of locale files.

In Magento you can change the default sorting attribute for product listing page from Magento admin.

To set the sorting attribute login to Magento admin and follow the following steps:

1. Go to Admin >> System >> Configuration >> Catalog
2. Expand the “Frontend” Section
3. Make selection from the “Product Listing Sort by” dropdown
4. Click the “Save Config” button.

In order to promote certain products, you may want to place them at the top in the category product listing page. Lets see how to set/change the position of the products from Magento admin.

To set/change the position of the products proceed as below:

1. Login Magento admin and follow the path Admin >> Catalog >> Manage Categories.
2. Click on a category in the category tree to display the category related information.