someone did something silly and created a virtual server named www.domain.com
now every new virtualserver administrator is added to the “www” group instead of the www-data group and the website for the new virtualserver is not working 'cause www is not allowed to read public_html.
(Permission denied: /home/name4/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable)
deleting the bad virtualserver and recreating the new virtualserver solves all.