For clarification, do you want to use Palatino, or Palatino Linotype? Because they’re two different fonts.

I suspect your website is falling back to the system version of Palatino because you haven’t declared where to find your font using @font-face. MDN Web Docs will be your friend.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if Beehaw changes forum software. I first came here to check out Lemmy on what looked like a safe instance, yes, but I stayed because I appreciated the calm community. I stopped participating when the Reddit migration happened, however, and Beehaw got more attention than before from other instances, and posters who don’t appreciate Beehaw’s policies. TBF however, recently I’ve gotten into more traditional forums, so perhaps I’m biased. But I believe that Beehaw is more than a Lemmy instance.