Have an footer in html as such:

 <div class="footer">
    <p>xxxxxx</p>
    <div class="pagec">Page <span id="pagen"></span> of <span id="paget"></span>
</div>

And it works fine, showing in all pages and keeping the page count, but we've added now a first page where the footer and count shouldn't show up. How do I go about it?

EDIT: Ideally, the count should start from 1 on the second page as the first page is just a cover page.

You can use a rule like @page:first { ... } to override your normal footer rule, and "counter-reset: page" to reset the page counter.