Here is my SQL query:

SELECT tblPortImg.portId, tblPortImg.portImgFile, tblPort.portId, tblPort.portTitle
                            FROM tblPortImg, tblPort
                            WHERE tblPortImg.portId = tblPort.portId
                            AND portType = '$portType'
                            GROUP BY tblPortImg.portId
                            ORDER BY tblPort.portTitle

Everything works fine, but the bit:

GROUP BY tblPortImg.portId

I need it so that it selects only the first record of tblPortImg.portImgId, whilst sort of keeping everything the same.

Is there a simple way to do it? Or have I not given enough information?

I'm not sure you have understood what group by does, or maybe I haven't understood your question...

"Group by" is an aggregate function, that will group all similar values as one.
Often, you use it with an "using" statement, which allows, for example, to count how many time a certain value is present and to display only those who are present multiple times

select count(username),username
from users
group by username
having count(username)>1

If you want the first (or any) value of the table, and if you use mysql or postgresql, you can use the "limit x offset y" statement.

select *
from tbl
limit 1 offset 0

And finally, if you want every different values, you can use a "select distinct".

select distinct username
from users

Thanks.

I think I understand what you mean. Im using GROUP BY to select only one record from the field

tblPortImg.portImgFile

for each record from tblPort.portId (if that makes sense?) I was thinking originally that I should use SELECT DISTINCT, but I couldnt figure out how exactly, then someone told me to use GROUP BY

Do you know how I could achieve this with SELECT DISTINCT ?

Cannot be achieved with distinct because you select multiple fields in select statement. Could you please tell me what exactly do you want? so I can helps.