Please advise - is there any way I can change sorting within database categories for Pages? Whatever I set for the database itself works only for the page it's embedded in but when I enter the category entries are sorted by record ID - and I want to set default as "publication date" everywhere.

If it needs a workaround in the database please tell me where can I find this because I've looked in admin panel and nothing works.

@opentype maybe you can advise please?

Thank you in advance for help regarding this. I want to dump Wordpress and switch entirely to IPB but that's an important obstacle to overcome.

It’s on the Options tab in the settings. 

This helped! Thanks, you're the best!