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: 
Consider using [Gravity Forms](http://www.gravityforms.com/). It's commercial but only $39 per site and it's one of the best $39 I've ever spent for WordPress development.
Plus one for gravity forms as I have found it to be much easier for my clients to use. Is easier to provide theme support for (ie Easier to customize via CSS) and has fewer conflicts with other plugins