The methods you call for the preconfigured widgets contain no active code - just data. Let's take Widget.stubs as an example: stubs: function () { return { type: 'api', params: { action: 'query', format: 'json', list: 'categorymembers', cmtitle: 'Category:Article_stubs', cmlimit: 10, cmsort: 'timestamp' }}; }, You may override all of these properties. There are other optional properties you can add. And you've already seen there's one property you must set yourself: the selector (see the Quickstart guide).