How to "force" a footnote to extend over both columns in a twocolumn article?

Question

I am trying to create a template based on a twocolumn article. In order to place some banners on the top of the first page, I had to redefine the \maketitle command, so now the \thanks does not work anymore. Anyway, I think this is not too much of an issue, because I can obtain a similar result with \footnotetext.

My problem is that I would like the footnote to extend across both columns (like in a single column environment), while now it simply stays under the left text column. So, I do NOT want the footnote to be split into two columns, but I would like it to extend across the entire textwidth, like this:

Since I am trying to create a template that will be used for many different documents, I cannot "cheat" by, for example, replacing the footnote with a \minipage or something similar, because I don't know how the text and the footnotes of the "future users" will look like.

This is a simplified example of my current code:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper, twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum} %some dummy text
\usepackage[hang,flushmargin, norule]{footmisc} %removes indent and rule from footnote

\newcommand{\customfootnotetext}[2]{{% Group to localize change to footnote
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{#1}% Update footnote counter representation
\footnotetext[0]{#2}}}% Print footnote text

\pagestyle{plain}
\title{This is a title*}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\customfootnotetext{*}{Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.}
\lipsum

\end{document}

Thanks a lot to anyone who will try to help! =)

Answer 1

A way is using multicol package instead of twocolumn option:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{multicol,lipsum,microtype}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum[2-5]\footnote{\lipsum[6]}
\lipsum[7-8]\footnote{\lipsum[9]}\footnote{\lipsum[10]}
\lipsum[11-16]
\end{multicols}
\end{document}