[sql]SELECT thread_title, thread_url FROM xhref_tags LEFT JOIN threads ON xhref_thread_id = thread_id WHERE xhref_tag_id = '3'ORDER BY thread_title ASC[/sql]
Ok ... I have had some doubts about it, but now I'm pretty sure - you are talking about LEFT JOINing tables all the time, but in fact you don't need it and I guess this is because you haven't realized yet what is LEFT/INNER/RIGHT JOIN.
Let's have some e-learning
Exercise 1)
Take a look at
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_join_left.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_join_inner.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_join_right.asp
And explain why the query showed above is wrong.
PS: I know why this has happened - you needed to JOIN two tables, you tried with LEFT JOIN, you liked the result (your "A-ha" approach) and you decided that you need LEFT JOIN, but in fact, you got the right results not because you were using LEFT JOIN properly, but because of your *data* happened to be so.