When someone asks, “What is SharePoint?” it is difficult to give a comprehensive answer, but this excellent article about SharePoint on MSDN does a pretty good job.

In a custom version of the ContentByQueryWebPart, the items that were displayed from a list were not being sorted in any meaningful way.  The default sort is the created date.  To fix this, there are a few properties that needed to be added in the implementation using the object model approach.  The properties are “SortBy”, “SortDirection”, and “SortByFieldType.”  Here is how this is done in code and note that the “SortBy” field is not the title of the field name but the item ID:

public class CoolNav : ContentByQueryWebPart
    {
            static string listGuid = String.Empty;
            static string url = String.Empty;
            static string itemStyle = "LinkList";
            static SPList list; 

            public CoolNav() : base()
            {
                if (listGuid == String.Empty)
                {
                    listGuid = SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb.Lists["Cool Navigation"].ID.ToString();
                    list = SPContext.Current.Site.RootWeb.Lists["Cool Navigation"];
                }

                if (url == String.Empty)
                {
                    url = SPContext.Current.Site.ServerRelativeUrl;
                }
            }
            protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
            {
                base.OnLoad(e);
                this.ListGuid = listGuid;
                this.WebUrl = url;
                // Sort Properties
                this.SortBy = list.Fields["Order"].Id.ToString();
                this.SortByDirection = SortDirection.Asc;
                this.SortByFieldType = "Number";
                String ServerURL = SPContext.Current.Site.ServerRelativeUrl;
                //Fix the URL Path
                if (!ServerURL.EndsWith(@"/"))
                    ServerURL += @"/";
                this.MainXslLink = ServerURL + @"Style Library/XSL Style Sheets/CoolNav.xsl";
                this.ItemXslLink = ServerURL + @"Style Library/XSL Style Sheets/CoolNav_ItemStyle.xsl";
                this.ItemStyle = itemStyle;
                this.CommonViewFields = "URL,text";
            }
     }