Check out the "starting" template for Lift: https://github.com/lift/lift_25_sbt/
In Lift Basic https://github.com/lift/lift_25_sbt/tree/master/scala_210/lift_basic you can see an example of a footer that can be put around many other HTML-s: https://github.com/lift/lift_25_sbt/blob/master/scala_210/lift_basic/src/main/webapp/templates-hidden/default.html
To use this footer, you access it like in https://github.com/lift/lift_25_sbt/blob/master/scala_210/lift_basic/src/main/webapp/index.html :
<div id="main" class="lift:surround?with=default;at=content">
Another link to read about this: http://simply.liftweb.net/index-3.3.html#toc-Subsection-3.3.3
BTW, starting with the lift_basic github template is a good idea anyway.