Changing default category sort order in Magento

Category toolbar has many options. By default it shows how many items are in the category, you can choose how many products you wish to be displayed per page, you can change the listing type (List or Grid) and you may choose Sort Order. This “Sort Order” can be confusing. The default “Sort Order” is “Best Value”. What does it mean? How is the Best value determined? Can we change the default sort order?

Setting default Sort Order for category

1.When you go to Category page in Magento administration (Catalog/Manage Categories),
 you’ll see “Display Settings” tab. From there you can modify “Available Product Listing 
Sort By” and “Default Product Listing Sort By” values.

2.Let’s modify “Default Product Listing Sort By”. If you deselect “Use Config 
Settings” and if you select “Price” for “Default Product Listing Sort By”, on frontend for 
specified category you’ll see that all items are now sorted by price ascending (growing upward). If you have Magento CE 1.7 with Sample Data you can modify sorting by Price for, i.e. Foods category. 

3. Additionally you can deselect “Use All Available Attributes” for “Available Product 
Listing Sort By” and if you check only few of them (“Best Value” and “Price”), on 
frontend you’ll be able to sort only by selected options. Now click “Save Category” 
button.

You should see something like this:

There is another approach using you can change the default sorting order:

1. When you go to System / Configuration / Catalog (left menu) / Frontend you’ll see “Product Listing Sort by” drop down menu. You can select the option you want for your site.

2. This will apply to all categories but notice that by override rule (fallback) this has lower priority than “Sort Order for category”.