I've created a template in template/catalog/product/view/ which displays a products image, title, sku and view info button. I've done this so that I can add suggested items into my 'description' area on the product detail page.

The template looks like this

<?php
$productId = $this->getProduct_id();
$_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($productId); //load the product
?>
    
<div><a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><img style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;" src="<?php echo Mage::helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'thumbnail')->resize(200, 200); ?>" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product['name']); ?>" border="0" width="200" /></a>

<p style="float: left; line-height: 24px;"><a style="color: #00a1b1; font-weight: bold; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 5px;" href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><?php echo $this->stripTags($_product->getName(), null, true) ?></a><br />

<span style="color: #ea1d25; font-weight: bold; font-size: 17px; margin-right: 10px;"><?php echo $_formattedSpecialPrice = Mage::helper('core')->currency($_product->getFinalPrice(),true,false); ?></span> <a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>"><button type="button" title="view Info" class="button btn-cart"><span><span>View Info</span></span></button></a><br />

Item / SKU: <?php echo $_product->getSku(); ?><br />

<a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>">Learn More</a></p>
</div>

The shortcode that I use to display looks like this

{{block type="catalog/product_new" product_id="40506" template="catalog/product/view/fap-recommended-product.phtml"}}

It works great you can view it here: http://204.232.181.65/test.html

BUT

I cannot use this shortcode in my (product > general > description) field. The output on the front end just displays the short code =( I've looked everywhere online but no one can explain my exact scenario here. Someone please help??

You can see the shortcode displaying as text in the 'product description' tab on this page http://204.232.181.65/defibtech-auto-aed-7-year-battery.html

Please note that I do not want to utilize Static Blocks. I am doing this as a short code in the product description and it has to be dynamic in this manner. because we have 100000s of products that are importing from netsuite and i want to be able to import these shortcodes from my descriptions in netsuite.