mysql date/time question

ok, 2 questions. first, how do i do a mysql query that orders by date? like, say i want to have 5 newest members who have signed up? i want it to display only 5 also. how do i do that? like this? $newestquery = "SELECT artid,title,artdate,artauthor FROM article WHERE artdate <= $today ORDER BY artdate DESC LIMIT 5"; and also, my next question is how do i format the display of date and time from how MySQL stores it to where i want it displayed differently in PHP? like, mysql will store it as YYYY-DD-MM and i want it displayed in php as date("n.j.y.") and time displayed as $time = date("g:ia"); my time and date columns are 2 different columns in my TABLE, and i want to know how to format the date to enter into mysql and how to format it when i retrive it from mysql. thanks for your help. -james (im a newbie programmer)