As a quick demo, I made a couple small changes on my test site, to show you what I mean. This screenshot is from the bottom of my announcements page:

https://www.ubbcentral.com/version7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=298

This took just a couple minutes and only required editing the footer.tpl file to add a few lines to include each box I wanted to include.