Your forum signature states that you use X-Cart 4.7, but you posted the message into the X-Cart 5 section. What X-Cart version is this for?
What issue with sorting do you have?
As for "sold out" items, you can make them appear on the site by enabling the "Show products which are out of stock" setting:
https://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:General_Options