The QGISGeoNode plugin currently uses the version.txt file to determine supported GeoNode versions by accessing the URL:
<geonode_instance_domain>/version.txt.
However, starting with GeoNode 5, this endpoint requires authentication, which prevents the plugin from validating the version successfully.
To address this, we plan to modify the way the plugin checks the GeoNode version. Instead of using the version.txt file, the plugin will verify the GeoNode API client version by checking if the response from /api/v2 is valid.