Custom Configuration Items for Web Parts

Hello,

We are developing custom Kentico web parts that make web service calls. What we'd like to do, if at all possible, is to avoid polluting the global Kentico web.config file with settings pertaining to our custom web parts. That way it makes moving servers / handling Kentico upgrades less of a pain.

Ideally, we would have a separate web.config file at the sub directory level where our web parts are stored (CMSWebParts/ClientName/ folder), but it's my understanding that the config file used in the web part would be the config file at the directory level of the page that the web part is being called from (a simple .NET aspx / user control solution test seems to confirm this to me).

I realise that one option would be to expose all the settings (bindings etc.) to Kentico web part properties that can be set when the web part is dropped on a template, but that doesn't seem ideal to me as these properties would be global across the site and not changing from web part to web part on the site.

Is there a solution that anyone has implemented or can think of that would separate our custom configuration settings from the global web.config?

Thanks in advance.