I have made some words in photoshop and i want to upload them but with no background around them so i want it transparent. However when i upload it to imageshack and post em on my site an ugly white box shows up around them.

Go to File >> New >> and choose Background Contents Transparent. Add your text, then go to File >> Save As and save it as a .gif or .png file (which I wouldn't recommend). :)

I have tried both .gif and .jpg file formats and the best one yet is .png especially if you use the Firefox browser because you can use a dropshadow on a transparent background and it'll stay like that but .gif wont

If you use .GIF it work on both FF and IE.
If you want semi-transparent the you should use png. But you are in IE you have to use alpha filter for IE 4,5,6 (7 is OK).

The best avenue would be using SVG (W3C standard for Scalabale Vector Graphic). Photoshop allow you to save it as SVG too.
- But you need plug-in or using ZipProtocol to have it display on its canvas. The you can control the background 100%. Or you can use ZipProtocol to display it on IMG or any other HTML element. You can check it out at oneplusplus.com

Hope this help.

Phi