Thanks for the reply! My long answer is here: https://forum.umbraco.com/t/proper-way-to-update-core-and-publish-website/6606/2 . To summarize, we will use the website for several of our clients and I would have to support different requirements/features on both front-end and Backoffice. Also the code will be audited, and we may have a need to change how something internally works. I'm still new to Umbraco and perhaps you can do all of the things by extending it through precompiled nuget packages, but would like the assurance that we have the capability of changing it ourselves. Thank you!