Question

Pretty much self-explanatory. Can MySQL sort dates (i.e. not alphabetically but like a date) when the dates have been formatted with DATE_FORMAT?

Specifically, in my case, only the DATE part has been extracted from the DATETIME values.

Answer 1

Yes.

ORDER BY DATE(`date_time`) DESC

If you have already calculated this when selecting columns, just use its alias.

SELECT DATE(`date_time`) AS `date`
    FROM `table`
ORDER BY `date` DESC