You're absolutely correct in saying that you shouldn't have to create boilerplate to have a footer with nav links on the bottom of every page.
I believe that the preferred way to do this in Django is by either creating a custom template tag, or by using template inheritance.
Template inheritance: create a base.html template with a {% block footer %} that can inherit and/or over ride it from any other template that needs.
Template Tags:
Create a simple tag that renders the comments thread, what's related links, etc... in a separate tag. This is the "preferred" way if you need to query the database for something that's related to multiple different views. For an example of that, see the django-pagination app.
I believe that the preferred way to do this in Django is by either creating a custom template tag, or by using template inheritance.
Template inheritance: create a base.html template with a {% block footer %} that can inherit and/or over ride it from any other template that needs.
Template Tags:
Create a simple tag that renders the comments thread, what's related links, etc... in a separate tag. This is the "preferred" way if you need to query the database for something that's related to multiple different views. For an example of that, see the django-pagination app.