It looks like you are trying to modify the Admin hom.tpl file. For the customer facing side, you will need to modify the /costomer/home.tpl file. In this file you will look for two things..
at the top of the file look for
Code:
<table border=0 width=100% cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 align="center">
<tr>
<td class=VertMenuBox width=6></td>
<td class=VertMenuBox width=150 valign=top>
{ include file="customer/categories.tpl" }
and remove
Code:
<td class=VertMenuBox width=6></td>
At the bottome of the file, looks for
Code:
<tr>
<td class=VertMenuBox></td>
<td class=VertMenuBox></td>
<td></td>
<td>{ include file="copyright.tpl" }</td>
and remove one of the lines that read
Code:
<td class=VertMenuBox></td>