In addition to @Dave-Hunt's response, you can also add a filter, such as the following, to define a custom order - in this case, alphabetical by title. (Code thanks to Mark Leong's blog post.) Remove the is_admin()
check, if you want you custom order_by on the front-end as well.
function set_custom_post_types_admin_order($wp_query) {
if (is_admin()) {
// Get the post type from the query
$post_type = $wp_query->query['post_type'];
if ( $post_type == 'POST_TYPE') {
// 'orderby' value can be any column name
$wp_query->set('orderby', 'title');
// 'order' value can be ASC or DESC
$wp_query->set('order', 'ASC');
}
}
}
add_action('pre_get_posts', 'set_custom_post_types_admin_order');
Update
For pre-save validation, see this answer: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/40095/4645
where your options are discussed. Basically, it comes down to custom jQuery, as WordPress doesn't have any pre-save hooks.
Also (duplicating my previous comment here for future reference), here's how to expose the 'menu order' field in the admin, so it's user-editable, as it is for pages: Adding 'menu order' column to custom post type admin screen