What's the best way to implement custom widgets on a per post basis?

Question

I'm creating a category called "Falculty" where each post is a member of my client's staff. Each post includes a biography and photo gallery of that staff member. My client would like to be able to add Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube links/feeds to their individual profiles.

What would be the best way to handle this to ensure that it's future proof? I'd like them to be able to easily add or remove these social media references at will.

I know little about adding widgets to posts/pages other than doing it on the front page. Is there a plugin that will allow me to do this? Should I use custom fields instead?

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube links/feeds to their individual profiles.

Those links/feeds are meta data for posts, so postmeta is the place where you should store them. Easy way to add meta data to posts is Custom Fields, also you can create and use meta box for this purpose.

Here is tutorial for creating meta boxes: http://www.wproots.com/ultimate-guide-to-meta-boxes-in-wordpress/