Products automatically disappear when they're sold out?

[fishbucket]

Say there's a product page with several sub-products: a t-shirt with S, M, L, XL. With our site, if the XL sells out, that option remains on the product page until the entire site is republished. This is very misleading, since it makes the user think that a size is still available when it isn't. (we're also having problems with these sold-out items actually being ordered, even though the inventory settings should be prohibiting it, but that may be another issue.)

When a sub-product sells out, it should automatically disappear from a product page without requiring a manual republish. This seems like a very reasonable request, and I'm surprised to find out that shopsite doesn't work this way. (I'm hoping that someone will tell me that there's already a solution to this!)

thanks, any feedback/suggestions would be appreciated!