Orderby="date" stopped working

A month or so ago the orderby=”date” stopped working. It lists all posts in descending order as I want it to with order=”desc”, but not date.

I have also deactivated all other plugins and tested. There doesn’t seem to be any conflicts with other plugins.

Also, is there anyway to exclude pages other than having to list each individual page id? Its getting to be a long list and if we don’t remember to add it each time, it shows in the list.

Thanks.

https://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/simple-sitemap/