My take is to stay away from boxing at first. Where I trained there were two main gyms in town, a kickboxing gym and a boxing gym. A lot of the kickboxers went on to mma and quite a few had success in pro mma, a few even went and did well in UFC. Not one of the guys from the boxing gym were able to transition, they just lacked the fundamentals necessary to build into mma. The worst thing about the boxing gyms are that they have you put weight on that lead leg, and things like hooks they want you to rotate and throw real tight with good boxing technique, and from a range vulnerable to clinch and knees.
But if you can get some good kickboxing fundamentals in, it is important to train at a pure boxing gym for a while, as long as they don't make you radically change your stance to a more boxing leaning stance etc. My advice would be to train a year or two in kickboxing, then branch out and do some straight boxing training, but also do some training at a traditional taekwondo gym also, assuming there is good talent there. Don't want to be surprised when you encounter spinning techniques as one spinning hook kick can change you forever.
In the "more hands than feet" or more "feet than hands" debate, I lean towards training kicks more. I had 15 muay thai fights and went 13-2, and the guys I lost to were also diverse. The kickboxers I fought who were "more hands" were mostly easy to cut down with low kicks. I also find that training kicks is more applicable to being able to throw good knee-strikes, so you get two benefits by training mostly kicks.
You see a lot of guys who can kick not employ their kicks very effectively, and as a result, kicking, even in UFC, is a bit misrepresentative of its effectiveness. I think the important thing for a kicker is to be very cognizant of when and when not to kick, and if this is not focused on during training, even a great kicker will have issues in an mma fight (takedowns etc). If kicks are properly employed, the risk of getting taken down or countered is not as high as you would think. For example, many would argue that a head kick leaves one "standing on one leg off balance", but a good kicker will tell you they do not feel off balance or vulnerable during a headkick attempt, and objectively, you don't see that many takedowns off a head kick attempt. The problem with punching is you have to be so close to your opponent that he is only one step away from a takedown, while a kick puts them two steps away from a takedown, and that is why good kickers are doing very well in employing their attack, even against good takedown artists.