Keeping your plugins up to date is one of the most important things you can do after you have installed WordPress.  For security reasons, and reasons of functionality you always want to make sure you are running the latest and greatest version of each – and here is how you can get it done quickly, through the WordPress administrator interface. 

First thing, go to the Plugins page from within the WordPress admin interface.

Next, find the plugins that need to be updated.  As you can see from the picture above, we only have one.  On the Manage Plugins page, scroll down till you find the one that is highlighted, like this:

Click the, “upgrade automatically” link to upgrade the plugin from within WordPress.  Your WordPress install then should upgrade the plugin in question, once complete – it’ll ask you to return to the plugin page.  You are done.  Now your plugin is updated.

How many plugins should you install?  In most cases, I would suggest you keep your plugin number under ten.  Also, you should check for updates early and often, because when plugins are updated they are often giving you new features, or updating security issues.

For more WordPress help, be sure to check out the web hosting wiki!