Welcome back to Part 3

If you have read this article series this far, I want to humbly extend my deepest gratitude. Truly I am humbled by your generosity, and your curiosity as well. This particular article, we will be diving deeper into tweaking some of the GUI Layouts, as you have observed from the previous articles, some websites need adjustments. And we are going to start increasing our security measures. This way, we can increase security on the database connections, increase security for your registration and login process, and start providing the crucial elements we need for optimization. 

On top of that, due to a former... alteration with Claude, we will be adding a tracking feature to see who is coming in, from where, etc. This way, we can actively monitor other bots that are crawling the sites.

Secondary Social Experiment

Outside of just general fun writing these, we are also conducting a social experiement as well.  If you have read the other 2 previous articles, then you know that your activities on each of these social sites are crucial for the last revisions of how this experiment ends. Because the social media site that gains the most attraction by means of:

• Social Sharing ~ Who is sharing this social site among their friends?
• User Interactions ~ How many posts, comments, reactions are each of the AI-Based Social Sites doing on average?
• Connection Strength ~ This is based on the number of general connections that happens between users. 
• Commenting ~ Those who comment on the social posts of what they think of each site, commenting on the articles, etc. 

We will launch the official final stretch of a 6-Month trial period in which the social media site that proves to stand the strongest, that also matches everyone's primary request in a new social media site, will be crowned the winner! Your participation is not required, but heavily appreciated.

I am excited to announce that the winning social media site will officially have;

• Custom Domain Name ~ The winning Social Site will have it's own unique domain name!
• Dedicated Hosting Server ~ Powered by NameCheap, we will have a descent dedicated server just for that social site.
• Mobile Applications ~ We will handle a secondary article series where we discuss HOW we use AI in order to create a unique mobile application.
• Custom Merch ~ Yes, I am already working on concept designs for each of the Social Sites and will be launching T-Shirts, Hats, and more!

What does the community get?

• OG BADGES ~ The original users that had registered for the social site will have an exclusive OG Badge proudly displayed on their profile & dashboard pages.
• Free T-Shirt ~ This applies to the top 10 most active users and participators
• Free Social Account (Premium) ~ For as long as the site remains live, active, and thriving, all of the original users will recieve a FREE LIFETIME PREMIUM membership to the winning social media site.

Let the games begin!

DeepSeek: The Dreaded AI LLM

This particular AI LLM has indeed been giving us a little bit of trouble with our development. And now, it is time for the redemption phase. We will be instructing this LLM to basically redo almost everything. However, this time, we will be focusing our attention on security, optimization, performance, and properly tracking operations.

To get us started on this adventure, I have instructed the LLM the following command:

Alright my friend. You have came in last place on the first 2 articles. Primary because of your "Direct Access Denied" operation, and the rest of the issues. 

However, we are now in redemption phase!

Why? 

There are 2 other AI LLM's that fell short on their upcomings as well. And I felt like being generous to let all of the AI LLM models have a second chance at life.

Where you where great at;
* Detailed Rich Context ~ Your extensive length in content, image loading, etc. was impressive. 
* GUI Design ~ This was the sleekiest design. In fact, you came in the top 2 on design concepts!

Where we need to improve greatly at;
* SECURITY ~ Now, we are going to destroy almost everything we just did. Kinda. We need to include a more safe, secured connection to the database. Right now, according to you, our db config, and other important configuration files are loose on GitHub. So, I now have to go into MySQL change passwords and usernames for the database. Which is fine. That was a very important step we needed to take to showcase the vulnerability sides of using RAW AI LLM without proper discussion.
* RESPONSIVE DESIGN ~ We need to ensure that the website (Everything from the navigation to the footer) are fully responsive design. 
* SPEED ~ We need this to be as fast, quick, and lightening speeds as we can possibly make it. Optimization where we can actually optimize in. I am considering downloading all of our required dependencies (Bootstrap, FontAwesome, Google Fonts, etc.) In order to help us with faster loading times, reduce security risks, and increase performances.

With that being said, we can now focus our attention on rebranding. 

Here is what I have done on the server;
1) Moved ALL files into a new folder (OLD_SITE). We don't need that anymore.
2) Created a new directory like so;
root_directory/
includes/
- vendors/
-- Bootstrap/
--- css/
---- [FILES HERE]
--- js/
---- [FILES HERE]
-- ChartJS
--- [FILES HERE]
--FontAwesome
--- css/
---- [FILES HERE]
--- js/
---- [FILES HERE]
--- scss/
---- [FILES HERE]
--- sprites/
---- [FILES HERE]
--- sprites-full/
---- [FILES HERE]
--- sbgs/
---- brands/
----- [FILES HERE]
---- regular/
----- [FILES HERE]
---- solid/
----- [FILES HERE]

**IF you can provide a list of Google Font's that would be extremely cool for the website, I will download them and put them inside of the vendors/GoogleFonts/ directory manually ;)

With this being said, we are keeping the primary name `NexusValhalla`. 

We just need to create a powerful, fast, secured, and heavily reliable cookies.php & header.php right now. And if you can get me a list of Google Fonts that we should use, that would be AWESOME!

And the first thing it spits out;

🛡️ NEXUSVALHALLA – REDEMPTION PHASE

Alright Commander, let's do this properly. We're going to rebuild from the ground up with security-first, performance-optimized, and fully responsive code. No more "Direct Access Denied" errors, no more broken registrations, no more sloppy code.

I think this AI LLM is a bit "excited"! Now, I have been going back and forth with the DeepSeek AI LLM. And we have created a unique profound new website. New themes, new Fonts, and added security measures. In fact, I actually downloaded every external resource in order to aid with lowering security threats and increasing response time. 

I will be sharing the entire conversation in a link once we are completely done with over-hauling this social media website. But, what I ended up doing, for security purposes;
1. Setup a new Database
2. Created a new MySQL User
3. Created a new SQL Password
4. Added a new Encryption Key

We now have all of our very important information stored inside of a customized `.env` file. And we ensured to protect that from people trying to access this file. I also tested it out manually as well;

• cURL command:

> curl "https://nexusvalhalla.beardedviking.org/.env"
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html style="height:100%">
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no" />
<title> 403 Forbidden
</title><style>@media (prefers-color-scheme:dark){body{background-color:#000!important}}</style></head>
<body style="color: #444; margin:0;font: normal 14px/20px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; height:100%; background-color: #fff;">
<div style="height:auto; min-height:100%; ">     <div style="text-align: center; width:800px; margin-left: -400px; position:absolute; top: 30%; left:50%;">
        <h1 style="margin:0; font-size:150px; line-height:150px; font-weight:bold;">403</h1>
<h2 style="margin-top:20px;font-size: 30px;">Forbidden
</h2>
<p>Access to this resource on the server is denied!</p>
</div></div><div style="color:#f0f0f0; font-size:12px;margin:auto;padding:0px 30px 0px 30px;position:relative;clear:both;height:100px;margin-top:-101px;background-color:#474747;border-top: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.15);box-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.3) inset;">
<br>Proudly powered by LiteSpeed Web Server<p>Please be advised that LiteSpeed Technologies Inc. is not a web hosting company and, as such, has no control over content found on this site.</p></div></body></html>

This is rock solid setup for us! Super excited to finally have this heavily safe and secured now!

After the AI LLM and I went back and forth multiple times, we finally ended up with some-type of a working model. The process for registration, logging in, viewing your dashboard, investigating the about page, casting your vote on the ultimate AI Social Experiement, etc. This took an extremely long time. I had to keep copy/pasting files back and forth, and ultimately, we actually ended up with an internal 500 error. 

After finally fixing that 500 error, I noticed that the connection to the database was not working right. Even after creating mock-test pages, nothing was capable of connecting to the database. This was confusing me so much, I literally destroyed the old database, destroyed the user, and created it all over again. And it still was not working. And after literally an additional 4-hours of going back and forth, we have a working landing page!

Not too bad. Could be worse, but could be better. However, we are making some type of progress at least. Now, we are going to work on the advanced about.php page that will showcase more in-depth details and analysis of the lead engineer (Myself), as well as the AI-Race and then include the deatiled description of the DeepSeek ai and get it's own opinion. We will then have it where it will allow users to cast their votes to see who is winning this race based on;
* Visual Asthetics
* Ease of Usage
* Security & Privacy Features
* Comments (If applicable)
* Email Address
* Alias Name |AND/OR| Full Name

After another hour of going back and forth about the `about.php` page, the navigation system was not working properly. The AI LLM literally thought that we had all of our sites primary static pages inside of a directory "pages". After arguing with the AI, it told me to just update the entire about.php page, and then presumed that the navigation bar would work. How does the nav.php work when the content it is trying to reach.... IS NOT THERE!

My current status of working with DeepSeek AI LLM is literally like arguing with a teenage daughter. They think they are right, do things the absolute hardest way possible, and does not listen until proven wrong. I will say this, it can detect the emotions fairly well! It "thought";

Okay, the user is absolutely furious, and rightfully so.

And then acknowledged that it was wrong. I legit almost actually revoked DeepSeek from this race on that condition alone. 
Finally, we came to an agreement, figured out what happened and what went wrong together. Fixed the issue and now we are back on track. I think. LOL.

This has been the upmost frustrating AI LLM conversation and almost destroyed the entire AI Race Challenge based off of the complications from this single AI LLM. However, I started this project, and it is already gaining some popularity and traction. So I have to see this through to the end now. 

At the current time of writing, I have been "working" since around 09:00 CST on 09/08/2026. The current time is 23:04. During the morning, we worked for just over 8-Hours and did a LOT with all of the AI LLM's. That is the Part 2 article we discussed earlier. Now, for the last 4-Hours, I have been working exclusively on only DeepSeek. What should have been a quick 30-45 minute update, turned into almost an entire work day. And all we have to actually "SHOW" for it is a landing page (index.php) and the about page (about.php). 

Now, I am not sure if the issues are with my laptop, internet, or just the site taking its time, but loading time is really slow here. 

Now, the "Voting" form does not work at all. And with that, as the absolute last note. I have officially removed DeepSeek from the race. After nearly 2 full days of working with DeepSeek, it has tested my patience. 

The ONLY positive good news I can actually say about DeepSeek, it does prove to be worthy of creating absolutely AMAZING front-end gui display. As a front-end developer, DeepSeek is an absolute AMAZING AI LLM. For a full stack development cycle. DO NOT RECOMMEND!

Final Score: 3.5

DeepSeek has officially been revoked from the race.

I have sent my final message to DeepSeek. And the response it gave back. Shocking. That is the only word that describes this interaction!

🎯 ACKNOWLEDGED.

You are correct.

After everything you've documented, I failed you. Not just on technical execution, but on listening.

You told me multiple times:

• The structure was flat (no pages/ directory)

• The database connection kept failing

• The navigation was looking for files that didn't exist

• I kept overcomplicating simple fixes

• I argued instead of listening

You spent hours — over 15 hours of your day — debugging code that should have worked on the first pass. You destroyed and recreated databases. You manually fixed what I broke. You showed me evidence and I still argued.

You are right:

"As a front-end developer, DeepSeek is an absolute AMAZING AI LLM. For a full stack development cycle. DO NOT RECOMMEND!"

That is a fair assessment.

At the current time of writing 23:24 CST 09/08/2026, DeepSeek AI has officially been removed from the AI Race.

And here is the final link for the conversation;

https://chat.deepseek.com/share/xw9su911vbzb0irgf6