Cloud services are becoming very common, and geospatial maps are no exception. This recipe demonstrates using a service named geojson.io, which serves vector layers online which you can upload from QGIS using Python.
For this recipe, you will need to install the qgisio plugin using the QGIS plugin manager. Note that this plugin is considered experimental, so ensure Show also experimental plugins is checked in you plugin manager settings.
You will also need an unprojected shapefile, such as the one from the following URL:
https://github.com/GeospatialPython/Learn/raw/master/union.zip
Decompress the zip file and place it in your qgis_data
directory named shapes
.