Need some help with “the_widget()” function

So I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use this same function for all of my external widgets. (am I wrong here???)

If you are comfortable looking at PHP code to get the argument list of each widget, if you are trying to make it more difficult for you (or other admins) to be able to easily change the settings of each widget in the widget form and if you are able to handle a few PHP coding errors while testing, then this function may be for you.

If you prefer drag an drop placement and the convenience of the widget form on the widget page to change options or to add or remove the widget, then this function may not be for you.

Specifically I don’t know what arguments to use to do the following …

Look at the widget code (in the \wp-includes\default-widgets.php WordPress file) for the widget you are referring to. The list of arguments is in the code. The arguments may not be all in one place or even documented as arguments.

For example, in the WP_Widget_Archives PHP class there are 3 settings:

$instance['count']
$instance['dropdown']
$instance['title']

You can find them by looking through the code. You can set them in your call to the_widget(). Here I set the title to be empty. What effect that has on the widget code can be seen by testing the change in a web page and seeing what happens.

// Other code.

$instance = array();
$instance['title'] = '';

// Other code.

the_widget( 'WP_Widget_Archives', $instance, $args );

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