Question: How does one go about building a page in wordpress that contains a contact form full of custom fields, boxes, inputs, etc. completely determined by the author of the site. It seems odd that wordpress currently lacks this feature, but knowing the wordpress community, it's unlikely that we must do without.

Answer: 
One of the most common plugins used to do this is [Contact Form 7](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/). There are also [numerous other free plugins](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=contact+form&sort=) to add this functionality, as well as paid plugins such as [Gravity Forms](http://www.gravityforms.com/).
Add me to the Gravity Forms supporters list. Of course it does a lot more than just contact forms. You should definitely check out the feature list and decide if it is worth your $39 dollars. It was a no-brainer for me and I bought the unlimited site developer license. The time that it saves me makes it worth it.