Nice start. It looks like a big mess right now, though, so you might want to move the text to a corner and make the BG image more visible / replace with a more visible one
Lol just realized you were talking about your thread layout not your sig. Comment still applies.
Photoshop is an amazing program indeed mate but not for people like yourself who give up so easily and thinking that they can do everything while using it whithin 2 days.Not to mention that you've followed 0 tutorials to understand the main uses of photoshop.
Anyways, if you still wanna know how to transparent a layer, just untick the "eye" icon next to the bottom layet which is supposed to be your background and then save the file into a .png format.
Anyway, I suggest you start looking at some tutorials, and start experimenting on your own with some effects. Don't just use layer style, try using different effects from the Filter category, etc.