You’ve still got mail — but AOL is redesigning it from the ground up to be faster and easier to use.

AOL Inc. is opening the doors to its new Web-based e-mail program, code-named Project Phoenix, for a limited number of users. Starting next year, anyone will be able to sign up for access to a beta test site.

Like Yahoo! and other competitors, AOL is trying to become the one-stop shop for reading messages from other providers.

But markedly absent from the new design is advertising. Fletcher Jones, the project lead for Phoenix, said AOL is working on other ways to make money from the free e-mail service because the old model — at least one ad dominating the right-hand side of the screen — isn’t seen as being user-friendly.