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: 
[Contact Form 7](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/) is one of the most popular plugins to add a contact form to a WP blog. It supports multiple contact forms and you can add/remove fields as needed. Additional services such as reCAPTCHA and Akismet can be added. I use this on most of my blogs to power the contact features.
I've been pleased with the (free) [Deko Boko forms plugin](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/deko-boko-a-recaptcha-contact-form-plugin/). Flexible, easy to modify and recaptcha is integrated.