The content I create via web forms does not seem to be making it to the lucene index. Is there just a delay, does it not get indexed, or do I just need to adjust a configuration?
It is not currently indexed. Indexing of deployed Alfresco content (to another Alfresco instance serving your website content) will be part of the 2.1 release. General searching of WCM content in the web-client will be in a future release after that.