[superkuh]

Use nginx (or whatever) and use server side includes for templating footers/menus/etc. It's extremely simple with the lowest possible attack surface for it's expressive power/utility. SSI should have never faded from the web dev toolkit; especially since it's actually still there in every popular webserver. Just,

    <p>whatever stuff here...lorem ispum, etc...</p>
    <!--# include file="/menu.html" -->
    <p>etc etc</p>

I use it extensively and it's great. You're still just working with .html files in folders.