I have the following in my htaccess to force the www in URLs:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] >
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
I added all these:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=localhost RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=127.0.0.1 RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !=127.0.0.1 RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !=::1